Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Meeting this Thursday, September 10th, 2026. Can we please have the Pledge of Allegiance led by Supervisor Kuro?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Is there a motion to acknowledge certificate of posting? Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor, aye. Aye. Thank you, passes. Next, we're going to move on to our presentations and recognitions section of the agenda. We do have a presentation today to recognize the 25th anniversary of the tragic events of September 11th, 2001 and observe a moment of silence and remembrance. So we're coming on, this will be the 25th anniversary tomorrow. So we just want to take a moment out of respect for those affected to have a moment of remembrance and observe a moment of silence. So we'll do that now. Thank you. Thank you for that. Any comments on that at this moment? If not, we'll move forward. Moving to the first item, the regular agenda. We have one item today. It is regarding our cannabis business activities tax framework.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the Board of Supervisors. I'm Rebecca Mojica with the County Council's Office, and today's presentation covers the Cannabis Business Activities Tax Framework following Measure D, the Board's rate setting authority, revenue projections, comparable county data, and as requested and related and was promised at the prior discussion, we're also coming forward with some current, or just to review the current cannabis development standards or some of those, as well as staff's proposed code revisions and some items requiring the board's direction. So this slide distinguishes between the voter locked provisions and the board's administrative authority. So Measure C was approved in 2018 and it established the cannabis tax as a general tax for the county. measure d approved this june updated the cultivation tax ranges to one thousand to ten thousand dollars per acre the board can't exceed these maximums without a new vote however the board does have authority to set the rates within those ranges by resolution adjust the rates at any time exempt certain categories as is currently done and interpret methodology and that's all without going back to a vote of the people Now let's look at the specific rate structure that the voters approved. So all cultivation categories now share a uniform range of $1,000 to $10,000 per acre following Measure D. Cultivation is still temporarily exempted through December 31st, 2026 under our Ordinance 1077. And non-cultivation rates remain on a gross receipt basis. And you can see the chart there. So the board can set different rates for different categories and can also distinguish between medicinal and non-medicinal businesses. So with that rate structure in mind, let's look at what these rates mean in terms of projected revenue.

So this table projects revenue across four different canopy scenarios.

So currently we have 778, a little over, acres that are dual licensed by both the county and the state. So that would be the most conservative revenue basis or projection, that second column. Looking, going down, so at $3,500 per acre, that generates approximately $2.7 million at 5,000, approximately 3.9 and the maximum 7.8. So the different columns show canopy increases from 1,000 acres this year to 2,000 by 2028. And so you can follow the chart and at the full, you know, build out or full acreage use, then we would at $5,000 per acre increase would go up to 10 million so these forecasts do assume full utilization actual revenues will phase in gradually and depend on the projects in the canopy of the cannabis so to put these rates into perspective um we had some question about other california counties and what they are doing So San Benito's per acre rate is not consistent across all counties. So we have a conversion there of both per square foot and per acre. So even at our maximum of 10,000 per acre, that's roughly $0.23 per square foot, which is below most comparables. We see Lake County with a range of $0.52 to $1.55 per square foot. Monterey at $0.71 to $2.13 per square foot. Both Humboldt and Sonoma have reduced their cultivation taxes to zero this year. So it's something to note in response to what appears to be industry and economic factors. San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz use gross receipt tax at 6% and 7% respectively. And another note on there is that California did eliminate its cultivation tax in 2022. And so the state excise tax at 15% of the retail price remains their form of revenue and local taxes remain on cultivation. Another no is just that the conversion for one acre is 43,560 square feet. So just so you know the factor that was used there. Now let's shift from the tax framework to the business and zoning parameters that are within also within your authority. So these parameters are not voter locked and the board can adjust these without going to vote of the people. The board can control the canopy caps, the permit limits, zoning, exclusion zones, setbacks, acreage minimums, all under the land use and zoning provisions of our code and do as are referenced in the applicable sections. On the business licensing aspect, the board sets the applicable fees, the required background checks, has 12-month renewable permits and suspension and revocation authorities all spelled out. As far as the compliance, we also have regulations. And we could further address things like non-producing operators through unused acreage revocation, expanded background checks, and enhanced monitoring fees, as have previously been sort of raised and will be discussed more later in the presentation. Other enforcement tools include fines. So for when it comes to penalties, that goes up to $10,000 per day for illegal operations. and escalating penalties for permitted operators up to $5,000 per day per violation and where there is three violations up to permit revocation. So now let's look at some specific development standards that are currently in place for cannabis operations. So under Chapter 19.43, which is the Cannabis Business Land Use Regulations, section 70 has general development standards applicable to all cannabis businesses as well as the restrictions so there the setbacks include 30 free 30 feet from the boundary of the parcel 300 feet from any off parcel permitted residence and that's in a couple places in the code, as well as 600 feet from any parcel containing a sensitive use. And that is defined to include churches, licensed childcare facilities and homes, licensed daycare facilities and centers, including employer sponsored centers, family daycare, family daycare homes, schools, school evacuation sites, youth centers, and youth oriented facilities. Under Section, or sorry, under Chapter 702, Cannabis Businesses, Section 30, Prohibitions, prohibits outdoor cultivation within the hemp exclusion zones. Under Chapter 704, which is the hemp regulations, Section 3C includes or defines the hemp exclusion zone to include a half-mile buffer from the sphere of influence of Hollister and San Juan Bautista, a half mile from any permitted visitor serving wine or hospitality site within the hospitality and wine priority area as defined in the general plan and a hundred feet from any highway. Additionally, it has requirements for frontage of the cultivation being fenced and that indoor hemp or cannabis cultivation within a completely enclosed structure is permitted only within designated areas under the code. Other current standards include a 20-acre minimum for hemp cultivation premises. Sorry, I lost my spot for a second. With two adjoining parcels totaling 20 or more acres also qualifying. And then hemp setbacks requiring 100 feet from any boundary line, 1,000 feet from any parcel containing a sensitive use. 1,000 feet from any residentially developed parcels of 10 acres or less and 1,000 feet from any off parcel permitted residents of 30 acres or less. Okay, so another just to note is that variants from these setbacks can be sought through the planning commission under the code. But from there, I am happy to hand it over to Stephanie Reck, the county's cannabis coordinator to cover some proposed code revisions.

Hello, good morning. So I will as briefly as possible summarize some of the cannabis code amendments that we're recommending based on the almost two years of implementing this program. So we're seeking policy direction so that we can develop specific ordinance language and return to the board with those proposed amendments. So the first area is going to be disclosure and accountability. The county's current code addresses certain participants through its definitions of owner. applicant property owner and currently requires background checks for owners managers and supervisors however the code does not comprehensively identify individuals who may have a material role or financial interest in the cannabis operation so staff recommend considering an expanded disclosure and background check requirement for key participants, which may include financial interest holders, property owners, leases, lessors, brokers, and other material participants to give the county a more complete understanding of who is involved and who has financial interest. So the next area is administrative setback reductions. The current code allows certain setback exceptions, but those requests are generally referred to the Planning Commission and requires special circumstances. Staff recommend considering whether certain parcel boundary setback reductions could be reviewed and approved administratively, specifically when multiple contiguous parcels are under common ownership and function together as one operation. So the next area is unused acreage. The board may want to consider whether approved canopy should be required to be established or utilized within a specified timeframe, and whether unused acreage could then be reduced or revoked after notice and opportunity for the permit holder to be heard. The intent would be to avoid having cultivation acreage remain approved indefinitely when it's not actually being used. Other jurisdictions provide examples for approaches that tie continued authorization of acreage to annual cultivation over time, including provisions addressing reductions to authorized acreage and, in some circumstances, temporary fallowing. So the next area is minimum parcel size. Staff recommend considering whether establishing a minimum parcel size for cannabis cultivation would help reduce smaller cannabis farms and limit the spread of cannabis operations across the county. So the next area is agricultural exempt structures and existing structures. So staff recommends clarifying the requirements applicable to agricultural exempt structures and reviewing the existing structure provision for cannabis activities. The current code generally requires that certain cannabis activities occur within existing structures if they're indoor, but does not establish a date by which the structure must have existed to qualify as an existing structure. Staff recommend considering whether a specific cutoff date should be established. The intent would be to provide a clear standard and prevent new structures from being constructed specifically to accommodate a cannabis operation prior to the application of a cannabis operation coming through. And, you know, it addresses a policy objective, you know, to preserve the rural character of the county and reduce the sprawl of maybe greenhouses. So the next area is fencing and screening. Through the application process, staff have identified concerns regarding the security and visibility of cannabis operations from public roads. Staff recommends strengthening our fencing and screening standards so that cannabis operations are not readily visible from the public road using appropriate fencing and landscaping. There are requirements for fencing and visual screening. They're just not spelled out clearly as to what type of fencing and what type of screening. So we just would like to bolster that. The goal is to balance security and operational needs within an agricultural landscape and maintain community character while also maintaining standards that are practical for agricultural properties. So the next area is step backs for sensitive receptors and hemp exclusion zones. Staff recommend revisiting the current reduction from the sensitive receptor buffer from 1,000 feet to 600 feet and considering whether the 1,000 foot buffer should be restored. This is based on issues regarding the smell of cannabis of currently existing sites. And there's no nuisance at this time because there's no sites that are that close to proximity to one of these sensitive receptors, but I could see it being an issue in the future. So we might want to consider expanding that boundary again. So for hemp exclusion zones, staff recommend considering the addition of census designated places, state parks and county parks. These locations are currently treated as sensitive receptors and have a 600 foot setback, but the board may want to consider whether they should also receive the higher level of protection provided by an exclusion zone. There is also a broader policy question regarding the activities restricted within those zones. The current provisions primarily address outdoor cultivation, so the board may want to consider whether exclusion zones should apply more broadly to other cannabis activities as well. So the next area is permit revocation and future participation. While we have revocation standards, we might want to look at or strengthen those standards. So staff recommend considering consequences when required participants or financial interests are not disclosed, including potential permit revocations or restrictions on future participation. Consider whether a prohibition should follow permit revocation, and if so, what type and length of prohibition would be appropriate. The board may also want to consider whether the prohibition should be increased for subsequent revocations. So the next area is retail in agricultural districts. Staff recommends reconciling the adopted code with the board's prior policy direction regarding retail cannabis in agricultural districts. During the November 2024 board discussion, there was direction to remove retail cannabis as an allowed activity in agricultural districts. However, the current use tables appear to continue identifying retail as an allowed use. That was clearly a mistake. and needs to be corrected. So there's also a related question regarding micro business, which may include retail activities. And if consistent with the board's intent, staff recommend prohibiting storefront retail in agricultural districts under a micro business, but allow qualifying non-storefront activities. So the next area is the fee structure. Staff are not recommending an increase to the current cannabis fee. Rather, we recommend reviewing the fee schedule to clearly identify costs associated with each department. The current fee schedule does not clearly identify what portion of the fee goes to each department. so finally staff recommend administrative references and code consistency amendments so these include updating agency references um reviewing um references to the administrative officer and updating them to county executive officer and other county designations according to amendments um and court sorry and coordinating the amendments across the cannabis code and zoning codes So these recommendations are being presented, again, primarily for policy direction. Following the board's direction, staff can develop a specific ordinance language and complete the necessary analysis before returning to the board with proposed amendments. So at this time, I'm going to pass it back to Rebecca, and we will wrap up this presentation.

Thank you stephanie so the board is asked to provide direction on a handful of items, the accountability standards development standards exclusions zone scope retail policy and agricultural districts. visual impact standards and they have any other direction, the board deems appropriate related to the cannabis code provisions. staff will then prepare the ord proposed ordinance amendment and coordinate across the various titles including title 1 title 7 title 19 title 25 the map being of proposed exclusion zones reviewing any applicable fee breakdowns and returning with draft language and to clarify for specific zoning use that'll follow the proper process and go through the noticing and planning commission review And separately, the board is also requested to review that tax rate to set a specific amount applicable to cannabis cultivation or the various categories. And as a reminder that the resolution can be effective as soon as September 24th, 2026, but that Exemption runs through December 31st, 2026, but it is also within the board to review that as well. With that, I'll open the floor to any questions from the board, public comment, and board discussion and direction.

Thank you. Let's hear from public.

If you'd like to make a comment in chambers, please provide your speaker card. On Zoom, please press star nine or the raised hand icon. And in chambers, we'll start with Caroline. Thank you, Roderick. And you can go to the microphone that's there in the middle.

Good morning. Good morning, Chair and Board of Supervisors. My name is Carolyn Roderick, and I'm the worksite organizer for SEIU 521, representing San Benito County workers. We are excited to hear about this tax since this should generate revenue for our county, which will benefit us all. As you know, our union contract expires at the end of this month. We sent our intent to bargain and request for information back in June. We haven't received anything. Today is September 10th, and we have not started. The county scheduled us for one hour for yesterday, actually, but canceled on Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend. I realize that you do not all wake up every morning thinking, how can I be the best employer? But a majority of your employees are also residents of this community. We ask the county to come to the table. Thank you for your time.

Next in chambers, Dean.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Dean Trinh. I'm asking the board to establish a sustainable cannabis cultivation tax that creates meaningful revenue without undermining the industry that generates it. As outlined in the report I provided to the board, San Bernardino County currently has approximately 770 licensed acres at $2,500 per acre. That represents nearly $2 million in annual revenue today, which is substantially more as additional acreage becomes active. The goal should not be to maximize the tax per acre. It should be to maximize long-term participation, compliance, and reliable county revenue. San Bernardino County previously suspended its cultivation tax because the existing structure did not produce a viable industry. We should learn that from experience from other California counties that have reduced taxes when cultivation declined. I recommend starting at 2,500 per acre annually with annual reporting on acreage and actual collections so future adjustments are based on real results. The approach gives the industry predictability, gives county meaningful revenue, and creates a tax base that can grow over time. The other input I have in terms of creating limitations of adding infrastructure to the growth are that at the farm that we're getting licensed now, there isn't a supporting infrastructure for the cultivation. So it's not that we're adding greenhouses, but you're growing all this flower, where do you store it? How do you dry it? How do you process it? And we're looking at building just some metal buildings to be able to do all that, but But the pre-existing structure being required to be applied for processing, how does that work? Now we're having to take all this product offsite, drive somewhere else, store somewhere else, process somewhere else. It only increases our cost of production, limits our ability to be competitive in the market. So just something to put into consideration. I think with any business, you need supporting infrastructure as you grow your business. Thank you.

Thank you. Next in chambers, Aziz.

Hey, thanks for accommodating this special meeting on this topic. My name is Aziz, and I'm with Lifted Farms. We've got a farm in Piscinas. I want to start by saying I really appreciate all the work the staff did, and I like a lot of their policy directions, especially around accountability and enforcement and that kind of stuff. I would encourage you guys to not look at counties like Santa Cruz or San Luis Obispo. The gross revenue tax, I mean, aside from the fact that even including Santa Barbara, Most operators have found a way to route their revenue through their distribution licenses, which have an effectively lower tax rate and are not really paying any taxes. You guys don't have to worry about that because... We have a per acre tax rate. I would encourage you instead to look at counties like Sonoma and Humboldt to a lesser extent that are reducing their taxes in order to help the industry survive. I would not suggest no tax, but if you look at wine, grapes, other crops, I don't know any other crop that would pay you even $1,000 an acre. you know um so i i suggest in the 2000 to 2500 range as well um specifically in regards to outdoor i think you guys could set different tax rates for indoor or greenhouse i think that's within your power and those businesses which get multiple turns um could maybe to afford to maybe afford to pay a marginally higher tax rate um and echoing what dean said um in regards to new infrastructure on properties i i think that is something to consider being able to build new buildings and create new infrastructure as long as it's done responsibly because you don't want to have a bunch of rotting infrastructure in 10 years so thank you guys and then next in chambers i believe jake

Good morning, board, staff. Jay Brooks from Brook Hollow Ranch. Great presentation from the staff. You've got a really great staff of people in San Benito County, which I think is a huge, huge asset. And I think not just the board, but the staff are approaching this from, I think, the right perspective. They've obviously learned from a lot of, I think, mistakes in an early industry that a lot of counties fell into. And, you know, this is an agricultural commodity. I sort of keep beating this drum, but this is a pure ag commodity. And San Benito County has a really, really a really, really great opportunity to be one of these larger export counties on a long time horizon. I was just out in Missouri at a part of operations, a very different market structure, very different economics, very different tax rates, no local taxes, 5% excise taxes. I would just encourage you to take a long time horizon view on this to really help this county establish a very large network of large, responsible, agriculturally-minded growers and treat this like an ag crop. I think a lot of the proposals from the staff make a tremendous amount of sense. I think all of them, I think, were fabulous. I think anything to touch on would be, you know, trying to treat cannabis as an agricultural crop. You know, agricultural exempt buildings, if you need a barn to store soil or you need a barn to store something, as long as it's in keeping with the county i think that should be something that the the board should consider i'm not going to go too much into tax rates i'm sort of a biased person on tax rates i would prefer it to be zero as low as possible is great for business but this county needs tax revenue and i think we all see that we want to make sure that the the voters and the constituents in san benito county can have good roads and can have things i would just touch on that point is Do not look at other counties as a baseline. I think you should start thinking differently. A lot of counties have really sort of killed the golden goose for cannabis, and a lot of people have come here or come elsewhere. Santa Barbara County is probably the most pure competitor to San Benito, has a lot of acreage. A lot of cultivation is going to go down to the desert as well, where it's cheaper ground, cheaper taxes. that California and San Benito has a great opportunity to be a big export county. That is dollars coming from everywhere else into this county to local irrigation suppliers, local staffing forces, local people that work the ground, other local farmers that are around us. We should see this as a way to compound the economy in San Benito from a cash crop, essentially. Cannabis is the second most valuable crop in the US. And I think if San Benito can have a meaningful portion of that grown by people who are responsible, I think that's a good thing for the county. So I just advocate for go low and slow, get the 2000 acres here and see this as a long time horizon crop. Once the economics have been fully developed, because we're about to enter, I would say within the next three or four years, a very national market. But we want to make sure the people that are here and are investing here, they're trying to do right by the community here. They're on a good, strong foundation. So thank you all. Thank you to the staff. And again, thank you for the time.

and i have no further public comment thank you all right back to board members anyone want to start with questions or comments go for it supervisor cosmicky um the how do we envision the unused acreage uh aspect playing out as far as um

you know, a little more specifics just to make sure that there's an understanding there?

Yeah, so as of right now, as you heard in the presentation, there's a little over 700 acres that are approved by both the county and the state. However, in my most recent discussion with all of the current cultivators, I believe only between 300 to 400 are currently being cultivated right now. And the way the tax structure is set up, you can only tax on cultivated acreage. You can't tax on approved canopy acreage. So I do think that it should be reasonable that cultivators can build out into their acreage over time and can show progressing to build out into their acreage. But if within a specific timeframe, they're not building out into that acreage, that's unused acreage that could be taxable if being cultivated elsewhere or by someone else.

Yeah, I appreciate it. I understand that. But a little more specific, how much time would they have? Are we going to survey the landscape?

If I may just jump in and clarify a tiny piece on that. The cultivation tax is on the approved acreage initially, and if there's a crop loss or

less than the full amount is grown then they come for a reduction to the county on that total amount thank you based on but essentially they wouldn't get taxed on the correct but how would we um implement implement that in a way that's both reasonable for the grower but also firm and from the county side so that we can kind of have a reasonable approach to that

Absolutely. So at this time, you know, we're really just seeking policy direction. I haven't dug into this enough or consulted with any stakeholders to really know what would look good.

More of a general thing. So I think generally speaking, it makes sense. But I just want to make sure that there's, I just want to have a better understanding. I guess there's more work to do, it sounds like.

to refine that and supervisor crow seems like she's got something so i i i just i see so many of these items that we're going to go through that we need to kind of talk on the item yeah so if the chair doesn't mind can can we all kind of chime in on just this one part sure because i think if we go through this methodically we're gonna get through it better and because i i'm already like hopping all over on where my comments are going to come out so i'm gonna give it back to you

Okay. So that's one. Minimum parcel size. I understand the reasoning behind it. For the most part, you want the larger growers. It's more efficient. I think Teresa Crowe was suggesting we kind of like take that at one time. Go ahead.

I want to open this just this one topic. So right now we're just talking about unused acreage. And where I got very confused is, counsel, you're saying they're initially taxed on the application acreage that they apply for. Correct. And then if they have a crop failure, a failure or a problem, then it is reassessed and subtracted from that tax.

Correct, and confirmed by the cultivator, and that's within the Measure C language that was initially adopted. It wasn't changed in Measure D, so that is current.

Okay, so that's current based on what voters have approved. Yes. So is there definitions about what that is?

The board is able to clarify these things, so one way it could be clarified is that the acreage is the grown acreage. So if there are two cycles that year, then the acreage is each, but we would need to look more into that. I'm not sure if that's exactly answering your question.

Not really.

Okay. Can you ask it again? Okay.

So maybe I'm asking it wrong. Do you want to take a jab at this, somebody? I think I do.

Are you asking, like, how we can verify that the acreage was legitimately not used versus just being sat on?

Who's saying what the definition of a damaged crop is? Yeah, because, yeah. And why are we taking the hit as a county on a damaged crop? No offense, everybody. It's okay. Hang on. I feel you. But what a definition of a damaged crop is when we're taxing on the acreage, but now I'm understanding minus what goes bad. How are we defining what goes bad and how are we enforcing and verifying what's gone bad? I see this as a huge problem. oversight issue. We're going to have massive, we're going to have massive oversight and micromanaging a business that I don't think we want to micromanage. That's my two cents. Thank you.

I just wanted, I've got a lot of the same questions that Supervisor Carro has and Supervisor Kosmicki, but just for purposes of this special meeting, are we able to possibly, and Chair, this is going to be a question to you and maybe to Council, are we able to kind of do things maybe a little bit differently today? I mean, we're going to take one item kind of at a time. I understand public comment was already given. But I do look to people in this room as somewhat experts. And I'm wondering, can we have somewhat of a back and forth dialogue today with people that are in the audience for purposes of this meeting and this topic, just to get clarification and real life, how things are working kind of out in the field type of. Just want to get clarification if you're okay with that or not.

I'm fine with that. I think I'm personally fine with that. I think we do need to make sure that we're not, that we are moving forward in some direction. We don't want to just keep talking back and forth and being stuck on this specific thing for an hour. So we do want to make sure that we're moving, but I'm okay with that personally. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. I just wanted to, as we're, I think there's going to be helpful input from the audience. So thank you.

Absolutely. And if I can just respond to Supervisor Currell's concern there, I think I have a similar concern. I get it. I mean, if I was... I don't think it's really – we need to be in the business of verifying whether or not the crop was legitimately didn't work out versus they just decided not to do it. So I think it's almost like we have to basically just put in the rule that was suggested as far as, look, if it's not being cultivated, if X percent of it isn't being cultivated over – x amount of time then you know that that goes away or it gets taxed one or the other because we can't just rely on oh i i lost it again sorry and and we have to like somehow verify that with them and check if that's legitimate versus not it just seems like a lot of staff time and money and so i think that i personally think the way to go about it would just be look if if it's not being cultivated over a certain amount of time then you lose it or you get taxed on it one of the two i think that's the way to go about it yeah

So I guess I didn't understand this part of it, and I don't know how much we want to get into people's businesses. So I was hoping we were going to be able to just set a rate per acre. We're not going to worry about how many crop cycles they're doing. We're not worrying about how many they're growing, not growing. They got permitted. They pulled a permit for 100 acres. We're charging on 100 acres. So, Rebecca, is there any way that we potentially could go in that direction or absolutely not? There's no workaround that we would be able to charge for the eight. Here's the problem. People are pulling more acres than they're they're wanting to use right now. So what is the incentive, you know, for somebody to to. What is where where would they not want to pull more? You're going to you know, I'm going to pull 100 so that I make sure that there's not enough acreage for you to grow and you to grow and you go ahead and pull 300 acres. I just this system that we've got is. I don't see it working. I don't understand how this is going to work in the real world. And so for me, it was kind of like, then make it fair. If you want 100 acres, then you'll pay for your 100 acres. But you're not going to pay. If you have to pay, you're not going to take more than you really need.

So under the code, so it is Chapter 503, Section 180 under the reporting and remittance of tax. under A1 related to cultivation type cannabis businesses. It does clarify, so I apologize for confusion, the decision to prorate or adjust the tax. And again, that's based on not utilized for cultivation or crop loss, along with evidence substantiating the square footage actually utilized or the crop loss. So that decision to prorate or adjust the tax will be made at the sole discretion of the county.

Okay.

Thank you for that clarification. So does that solve it for everybody?

Well, I don't know. I would like to hear from, I think there are people in the industry, I think, have some comments. I would love to hear what they have to say with kind of what we're discussing.

And as, if anyone wants to come up, welcome to, as they're coming up, just to clarify, is the suggestion then just basically tax on whatever you poll? Yeah, that's fine with me.

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I think that's super constructive. I think I just want to add some context to the actuality of running the operation. Essentially, you're trying to get quite two crops a year, a spring crop and a fall crop in basic terms. Now, the way that the state treats it is you apply and you get a license based on the canopy of your acreage. That's not including borders and things like that on the bed canopy. Now, the way that, and I can only speak to our business, the way that we approached it is last year we said about, hey, I want to use this year and grow on 46 acres. I used it, I applied for the state license, I applied for the county license. The next year I wanna add another 80 acres. I apply for it, I use it, I take up exactly what I use. I apply at the state level to take exactly that amount of canopy. I did that from a way of trying to get a good step to this county. Now, if I was an unscrupulous businessman and heavily capitalistic, I could have gone out and entitled my whole 400 acres of the ranch and maybe done it over three years, and that would have allowed me to get a good head start. That would have allowed me to shield other people from the county. I don't think that's the right approach, and I think it will be an approach that people may take, especially from the landowner perspective. If you've got land that maybe trades for 30,000, 35,000 an acre, but you've now got a very niche piece of parcel that is designated for cannabis, and it trades for 70 an acre, that's just smart landowning business, and this is a This is a smart county with a lot of smart landowners and agriculturalists. So I think it should be a use it or lose it type of scenario. If you've got 300 acres on your canopy, but you're only using 100, well, you're going to pay this for the state and you're going to pay this to the county. And if you don't want to pay it, then you've got six to 12 months and you're going to lose it. Otherwise, it's going to not allow people to come into this county that could be good operators who are going to pay tax. because the tax rates of the state are expensive and the tax rates of the county are expensive. And if you're having to underwrite 400 acres worth of taxes on a 100 acre crop, people are going to tie in the bells very quickly. And in terms of crop losses, just to give you context there, I don't think that's something that you're going to deal with a tremendous amount. If it does happen, I think it's going to be somewhat of an extenuating circumstances that should be verified by ag department. Maybe you have a viroid of fusarium that wipes out your field. That's hard on a grower. I don't know whether it's like a tax loss. I think you should just be understanding and maybe put the taxes on a payment plan or there's some amount of the taxes can get forgiven should there be a legitimate case. I think that's smart to do that just to help the growers. But I don't think it's going to be a problem that you're going to come up against too much. Typically, you pay your state fee with the california state if you have a crop loss sorry you've got a crop loss they should be the same probably for the county um and in terms of administrating taxes a quarterly billing cycle or a biannual billing cycle is probably ideal for the growers so i think that the amount of looking at crop losses is i think it may be a problem that seems like it's a large problem but i don't think it's i think it's gonna be a non-issue essentially thank you yeah okay

Okay. Any other comments from that hasn't been good. Well, it sounds like there's. Yeah.

Just to back what Jake said here, because I know there are a couple of people in the county that are going in applying for a large amount of acres, hundreds of acres that really don't have a real solid plan in terms of how they plan to utilize it. Right. just suck up as much acres as possible, block out as many people as possible so that they can do some sort of sub lease play, master lease play, whatever it may be. On our property, we have 75 acres. We're looking at between 15, 20 acres. That's all we can handle, right? No more than that. It's expensive to farm, expensive to process. In terms of crop loss, I think it leaves a lot of room or some shady players to come and, you know, just kind of like what Aziz was saying, there's always ways to circumvent some of these things. So I think something to really tighten up on. But yeah, I think just, if you're gonna apply for a ton of acreages, if you don't use it, leave room for other people, right? Thanks.

Okay, Syriza Crow? So out of this, in understanding what is being said, is that you get your state fee is paid for so many acres. They do it on canopy. And then we are talking about doing it on acreage. I really believe that, number one, we should never be issuing a permit. I mean, you get your state permit first. No, you get your county permit first. So if you get your county permit first and then you go to the state, if you're not going to the state for the full amount, that you did the county permit, are we balancing that? Are we verifying that?

Yeah, so I get all the state licenses, and some get what they've got, some request from the state what they received from the county, and some don't.

some request way less and and that to me is a problem i i feel like if if we're giving you know 20 acres you better be going to the state for the 20 acres and if you're not then we're taking whatever you didn't do back do we have the authority to do that not currently which is why we're discussing the revocation of unused acres right so that's what we can decide i want to know we have the authority to do that we don't have to go back to the voters

That would be a policy direction as part of the cannabis code.

Just making sure that I understand that. Because where I'm at right now is if they apply for 40 acres here, when they get their state license, they should be getting their 40 acres at the state. They should be balancing so that we know we're working off of the same crop. We're not having to play this, well, we have five over here and we have 10 over here and We don't want to get into that micromanaging and that you pay your fee, but on a case-by-case basis, if you're not cultivating, you still pay that tax in San Benito County, is my opinion. If you have a crop loss and you need to come to the board for an exemption or a reduction in your fee because of something, you'd have to come before us and we would have to approve it. That's where I'm at.

I think there's agreement on this, right?

I think we're all on the same page. You basically get charged a tax for what you're permitted. You're taking the risk as a business, and that's the way it needs to be, and that's the way that we get out of the business altogether, and that's just part of the model. You're going to have to bake it into your costs and revenues, and that's that. It sounds like that's... Sounds like we're all in agreement. Next issue.

Next item.

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, minimum parcel size. Like I was saying, I get the reasoning behind it. I'm just curious what the minimum parcel size may look like. I'm not familiar with what these folks need. I heard some numbers thrown around. I know there's larger. I know there's relatively smaller. I get that we probably want to get away from having people growing

uh with licenses in their backyards for point whatever acres um but please if you could just expand briefly on what what the direction might look like as far as minimum parcels yeah what i'm seeing right now is um an average of uh between 40 acres and 100 acres starting so um a lot of the individuals who started with 40 acres have expanded to 100 acres so um somewhere in there might be a good minimum for an initial parcel size.

Okay, and I don't know if, again, folks in the audience might be able to elaborate, but 40 acres, I'm not an agriculturalist, but that's a decent size for cannabis, is it not? I mean, I know when we were talking in our ad hoc discussions, the numbers were, I think, a little lower than that somewhat. These aren't large parcels where cannabis is being grown. I do know that. This isn't rangeland we're talking about here. So I don't know if anybody in the audience wants to elaborate again, if we could just do it as briefly as possible.

That would be great. Another quick one as well is there's different APNs. We have two APNs. I have a 20-acre piece and a 40-acre piece on an APN. There should probably be some designations about if it's adjoining APNs. I would probably set it at 10. 10 is probably a good number. If you're doing 10 acres of outdoor canopy, you capitalize, you know what you're doing, you should be somewhat organized. It's about 20,000 per acre, 25,000 per acre to grow a crop, so 10 acres is essentially a $2 million investment on the production side. So 10 acres is probably a good fair number, and it will be still easy to regulate.

That sounds about right to me. And then just so there's clarity on, like if you're somebody who's just in the backyard sort of thing, do you need a medical license for that, or how does that work?

So I believe you're maybe talking about our personal cultivation ordinance, and you're allowed to grow six plants right now personally without a permit in the county.

Great. So that wouldn't apply to all this. Would there be a proportional tax to those folks?

No, because it's just personal cultivation.

Got it. And then I just want to, you know, I just want to point out, you know, we're looking at a runway on both sides. We're looking at a runway of, you know, this $1,000 to $10,000. I think we all agree it's not the low end. It's not the high end, somewhere in between. But we do have, we do, you know, there's a runway for the fee, the tax, but there's also a runway that we're dealing with for the acreage. And I think from a smart business perspective from the county side as well, I think we have to try to find a number that's reasonable so that not only are we welcoming these growers to an extent, the good growers, but we're also playing this out the economics so that we're maximizing the revenue as well. So I just wanna make it clear, like if you choose a rate that's too high, And we're going to see how this plays out. I'm not prognosticating whatsoever. But theoretically, if you choose a rate that's too high, you might not get the level of demand that you would if the rate was a little lower. Maybe that's not the case with what we're looking at. But I just want to point that out as a consideration as well.

Really quickly, before we continue, can we just make sure that the 10-acre minimum, I thought I heard some consensus on that. Does that sound reasonable? 10-acre minimum? Parcel?

So originally my thoughts were, yeah, we should definitely set this minimum acreage size, et cetera. But I'm wondering if that sets us up for more. I feel like I've got a lot of echoing. If it's setting us up for potentially more issues and not initially maximizing the acreage, if somebody wants to come in and do potentially five acres and they're wanting to build their business are we limiting then and so now i'm a little bit conflicted while originally i thought yeah i want you know minimum and i'm going to want much higher than even probably 10 now i'm starting to think about it and i i don't know are we are we making things more difficult for people and maybe this is one of these areas where we can be um We can kind of see how this goes and try it out and maybe revisit next year and see, is that the right, should we set a minimum? If we set it today or in the future, is that the right number? Should it be lowered? Should it be higher? I don't know. I think there's a lot of question around the minimum acreage. Sorry.

Hey, Mindy. Hi. Just a quick input. We've been operating in Calaveras County since 2008. gosh, 16, 17, you know, went from Prop 215, where everyone can get a license, and then they shut it down because everyone had a license, and was creating a lot of issues with the local citizens and neighbors, and part of it's because you have allowance of, you know, three acres, four acres, five acres, and a lot of those parcels fall within residential ag, and so you have your neighbors, your kids, you know, this and that and the other thing, And what the board of supervisors decided to do was require a 20-acre minimum so that, at the very least, there's some setbacks for smell. Typically, those types of props don't have residents around it. I've seen this move before in Calaveras County where let's bring in some of these smaller players, but the issue then is you have these smaller parcels, which then are closer to homes, and the smell is going to be the smell. It's going to drift in October, right? Then you have security issues, things like that, traffic, people coming in and out of work. So that's one thing to take into consideration in terms of allowing for smaller parcels.

Can I, when you're done, we're talking about five because I'm thinking about this, all these five acre parcels that we have and it concerns me quite a bit.

I just want a point of clarification. Did you say 10 or 20 acres?

20 acres okay thank you for the clarification go ahead thank you yeah i was just going to say i appreciate the thought on just going back and forth on the welcoming but i i really struck me yeah it really struck me it did really strike me that you know we got to solve this five acre problem first i think before we get into because there's so many of these and we don't want this to become a little weed farm on every little five-acre parcel in the county. And I think that that would be a big mistake. So 10 acres, I think, for me would have to be the absolute minimum. I'm willing to consider 20. But again, this is all a starting point in figuring it out. Chair?

Yeah, I'll just say as the king of five-acre parcels in my district, I think I'm going to get strung up. So I would say 10 is probably more reasonable.

And then again, we're not going to get it perfect, but I want to make sure we're at least looking at this from a long term vision outlook from the business side. I think there are some things to consider as far as the points about We are an agricultural county. There has been quite a bit of an evolution in the acceptance of growing marijuana. Obviously, there are people that don't like the smell. So I think there's good considerations with setbacks that we're looking at. I appreciate that. Um, I, you know, we've talked about security. I think fencing is a good thing. Just also keep in mind that, um, yeah, of course I'll get off right now. Um, that this is a, you know, when you're dealing with the right players and we're really, uh, you know, I think we're going to be pretty firm on ensuring that we have the right players, um, that, that, you know, it's in their best interest to have good security because these are significant investments. Um, like if you own a bank, you're going to have a security guard. So they're, um, uh, they're going to be incentivized to have really high level security. And I think along with that, we want to make sure that our rules and our laws require that, but also being reasonable to extent. And something else?

I just want to go back to the acres because I'm trying to do this one at a time so we can check them off. And I'm trying to help poor Stephanie's like, okay, so what did we decide on the acres, right? I know what you're asking right now. I would like to conservatively start at 20 acres and revisit this next year. And if we need to reduce it down to 10, I have serious concerns, especially in District 1, with the massive amount of five-acre parcels. Because that allows setbacks that we'll be talking about and all that. So if we could make that kind of and move on to the next item.

I'm good with 20, yes, sir.

stephanie i know you mentioned that um i think most of the requested acreage from you for permit is between 40 to 100. based on the way that it's structured right now and you can just reserve those permits i how realistic are those numbers that because i think you said we have almost 800 acres that have been reserved so far with permits however you're expecting really only three to 400 acres to be grown. And so I'm wondering, you know, we're seeing, oh, your average parcel size are between 40 and 100, but that's in these kind of not even real things. Once people know you're going to be paying on the permit, you know, the acreages that you're requesting for permit, I'm wondering, do those now go down and it's between 10 and, 50. And so if we set it at 20, is that the right number? I don't know. I'm not trying to be difficult here. I'm just trying to be realistic. And we've set this, some of these things are so hypothetical that I don't know what the reality is of what potentially you're going to see when people are notified that no, it's going to be on the acreage that you ask for. So then all of a sudden people that have requested a hundred acres are going to come back and like, Oh, I only need 20 because now I don't want to have to pay on a hundred. I only want 20. So I don't know. Is there any, can you give me any feedback on that or does any of the growers have any feedback on that?

So I do have, and it's, you know, the smaller number of all the applications I have, but I have two applications for that are for about 20 acres. A lot of my bigger applications that were like 220 acres, they started at 60 acres. I believe the, um, five, um, The almost 500 acre parcels, the almost 500 acre project we approved, they started out, I believe, at a little over 100 acres. So it really just depends, right? You don't see the same thing happen consistently. But what I do see is that people begin their cultivation between 40 and 100 acres, regardless of what we provided to them. So they usually start a little bit less because of things like capital or timing based on when they were approved, how many seasons they have left in the year. Because I do believe, and my growers can correct me if I'm wrong, there's at least two crop cycles in a year? Three?

Not at least. Two.

So two crop cycles. So depending on when they're permitted throughout the year, then sometimes they start a little lower because they only have one crop cycle to get through. So there's many factors involved. And this goes back to the unused acreage conversation, which is why I do think they should be allowed to grow into their acres even if they don't use it at first. But there should be a reasonable timeline at which we then reassess how much acres they've been provided and how much they can reasonably cultivate. I'm not trying to open up a closed discussion, but- I don't think that's necessary.

We're going to tax it all at this point. Yeah, no, tax on all of it. That's where I'm at.

Okay, thank you. But it sounds like 20 acres could be a very appropriate number. I don't hear anybody that's really advocating for 10. So I'm good with 20 then. Thank you.

I'll wrap up because I think it's a good conservative number. And we have, again, wiggle room. Again, my main thing is like, you know, let's find a rate that's reasonable and we get to the rate. I think similarly to how we're looking at this other part of it. And I just, yeah, I'm really all about just having a sustainable model. Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions?

Well, I'm just, I'm looking at the presentation, proposed code revisions, and I think, so we've, essentially we've hit now unused acreage and parcel size. Let's go back to the top. Let's start at disclosure and accountability, and then let's just go down through the list and figure, like, let's just take one at a time, if that's okay with you two. Let's do it. So, I mean, the first one is... Sorry, I went too high. Disclosure and accountability.

Yeah, so right now we can only background check the person who holds financial interest in the company or a manager or a supervisor, which those individuals aren't readily known or identified at the time you apply for a permit. So you can't background check the property owner. There's a lot of times there's a leasee, a subleasee, a subleasee from the subleasee. There's many hands involved. And our current disclosure requirements do not paint an accurate picture of who all is involved. And we have seen that that is becoming an issue where we might have some bad actors having a hand as a leasee, a lessor, or a broker in many different businesses out here. So we would like to expand the county's ability to identify

individuals who are associated and that is the main reasoning behind this request mr chair i am totally supportive of that i think we should know everyone that's involved doesn't matter how many leases of leases of leases if you're involved in that parcel and you're involved in any cannabis activity we should be able to have a background check that's where i stand

Agreed, yeah, we know there's legal players here. We know there's cartels at times here, so absolutely.

Okay, we got next. So the next would be administrative setback reduction.

Yeah, so to explain this a little bit further, we have one application right now I'm working through, and they have two contiguous parcels. The existing crop that this property has been historically cultivated, not for cannabis, but other agricultural crops, goes through the property line between the two parcels, and there's a 30-foot setback between the boundary line of a parcel. So in instances where you have two contiguous parcels under common ownership, we feel like staff should have the ability to reduce that setback requirement because right now you can only get a waiver reduction through a variance, and a variance has to go to the planning commission. You also have to meet very special circumstances to qualify for a variance. They're really not that easy to get. So we think for circumstances very specifically, such as contiguous parcels under common ownership, especially if the crop area goes through the boundary line of the parcel, staff should be able to administratively reduce that setback for that specific site.

Makes sense to me.

So we already did unused acreage and parcel size. Ag exempt existing structures.

Yeah so this one's a little confusing the way the code is written and we're really just hoping to get some clarification. So as of right now you and for Cultivation, manufacturing, laboratory testing, micro business, you cannot cultivate in this county indoors or operate businesses indoors unless you're within an existing structure. Now many of our agriculturally existing structures are gonna be ag exempt. So our code also says that you cannot cultivate in an agriculturally exempt structure. So it really sort of hamstrings the ability to use these existing structures for the cultivation of cannabis. So I'm really looking for clarification or the board's current intent on whether agriculturally exempt structures should be prohibited as a use as an existing structure, for cannabis businesses. We think it would be more reasonable to remove that provision and allow agriculturally exempt structures, especially if there's an existing greenhouse or barn, like was mentioned before, for some drying purposes. And that would sort of open up what's available as an existing structure. And then what ties into this is my recollection of the board's intent in 2024 to prohibit activities outside of it in existing structure was that so that we didn't have a ton of cannabis development in the county and so we never um we never described the date as to which an existing structure would qualify for an existing structure so as of right now someone could come build a structure today and then come to me tomorrow and say i have an existing structure So it really defeats the intent of the board's direction, and maybe the board's direction has changed since 2024, but that's really what I'm looking for clarification on today.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So we're... We're talking about structures that are existing, and I see your scenario, and I think that that's how it'll get abused, because they'll build something that's an egg, and then they'll go and get an application. But when we're talking about what you're using them for, do we have a lot of processing in this county?

currently right now we don't have a lot i do believe jake does a little processing at his site and he was permitted to build a couple silos that help him with the drying but i do have some folks interested in using existing barns for potential drying but if it's an ag exempt barn they would not be able to use that existing structure because this is where i get

confused about the whole cannabis ordinance. I'm just going to be honest. We're taxing on the growing. And then now we have processing. And if you're having to go, you can process here if you have an existing structure. only if you have an existing structure. You can't build a structure to process.

That's how our code is written.

And I feel like we're not treating apples to apples here. So it's an ag product. We are taxing it at a, we haven't set a rate yet, but we're taxing it at a certain rate. If you're doing certain things on site, should we be considering that in the rate?

We do have rates for manufacturing, distribution, retail.

So we have all those sets. So if we're talking about promoting the business to be able to be more profitable so we can get more taxes, wouldn't we want it to be acceptable to have a structure built for the cultivation and manufacturing and processing? I mean, that's where I'm at. I want to hear where the board's coming from. I'm just trying to walk through. First, you plant the seed. Then you watch it grow. Then you cut it down. And then what do you do? I mean, I'm trying to walk through this in a methodical way to be able to make sure that we're covering. And if we're going to be able to get more taxes. for processing and all the other stuff. Why wouldn't we wanna have more structures? So that's where I'm at.

And many of them right now cut down their product and then send it elsewhere for processing.

And then we get no tax.

Mr. Chair, I mean, I don't see why we wouldn't allow somebody to make an investment if it's an ag structure, it's an ag product. I think it's just one of those cleanup items that seems logical that we would allow somebody to build something to allow their business to function.

Yeah, I'm just curious on with what supervisor crow was just mentioning and I think I saw in the presentation I'm going back to it right now. So we have the cultivation rate and that's what we're setting the range and we're working on right now, but they also can do the distribution manufacturing micro business retailing and a testing lab. all fits within the scope of things that they can do as well yeah we have existing rates for those if you give us a second we could no no i have them in front of me okay so but here's the thing and this is per gross receipts which we've heard that there's loopholes and you're not going to actually get i mean i'm just this isn't what we're talking about per se today but this may be something that we want to dive into a little bit deeper if this is where it's going to move towards is now You know, with the cultivation, now you're going to have all of these other things. Because right here, what we have is a minimum rate at set at 0.5 and a max at 4%. Are those even accurate? Are those the right numbers? We've got a range. That's something that we would then need to set.

We've already set it. I could find what that is if you would like me to. What you're looking at is probably...

Okay, because in our presentation it just has the range.

The range, yeah, and we do have adopted... Have we had anybody to date use any of these? No.

Would it be reasonable to think that that is in our horizon?

Absolutely, especially if we open it up for the building, the constructing of businesses and removing the ag-exempt structure prohibition.

How does the licensing?

So basically when you go to the state, and again, everything is dictated by the DCC, and I find it's best for the counties to somewhat understand the DCC licensing structure very well because you don't want a county ordinance that conflicts with something that can't even be done in the DCC. On the DCC license, if you have a large agricultural cultivation license, which allows you an unlimited canopy, you can process under that large cultivation license, but you can only process your own crop. Now, I think it's feasible and I think it is logical that at some point, if you have a very well-developed industry in the same way that peppers, tomatoes, there's different agricultural commodities in San Benito that is grown, there needs to be packing houses. Now, if you have a large crop, and let's say that I'm not always processing. You've probably seen the silos that we built from the highway. I can only dry my own crop. I don't process anything. I just dry the crop and I send it to be extracted down to typically Los Angeles, San Francisco, but it's predominantly down to Southern California. Now, those silos could be potentially a use for another small grower in San Miguel County that cannot afford to capitalize that. It's good for me, it's good for the grower, and we keep it in the county. So I would say as much business as you can keep in the county as possible in the same way that if you've got a tomato packing facility or a cannery, you want that cannery in San Benito because you can pan your own tomatoes or you could can your neighbor's tomatoes. So I think processing licenses make sense in terms of taxing them. Where you're going to find a problem is that you don't sell anything out of a processing license. So when you hear the Santa Barbara County, the reason they can't collect taxes is because they don't sell from the cultivation license. They sell from distribution. That is the point of sale. You don't sell from a processing license. You process on contract for a distributor, and then you tax the distribution. So I would see processing more of a ways to support the businesses in the county and allow the business in the county to make investments, hire staff, and invest in their businesses here to keep the crop here, keep as much value here to be taxed as possible. I would not necessarily see it as a large tax opportunity because it will be game, essentially, just to give you the full context on that. But I think supporting processing licensing to where you can process other people's crops or drive other people's crops makes its logical sense.

So the processing, does that fall under the manufacturing? It falls under cultivation. Oh, so there would be no additional fees for that. That would fall under their acreage. And that would essentially, that would be the ag-exempt buildings, et cetera.

Yes. Okay. And then if you're interested, I have the current tax rate that's set for distribution, manufacturing, microbusiness, and laboratory, if you would like to see it.

Sure.

CMAP, could you please pull my screen up? Oh, CMAP. Jonathan? Sorry. So distribution is at 4%. Manufacturing is also at 4% gross receipts. And then microbusiness is at 3.5% gross receipts. Retailer is at 3% gross receipts. And then laboratory testing is at 1.25% gross receipts. So those are the current rates set for the other activities.

Thank you. I don't know how reasonable these numbers are or, you know, how reasonable they are. I haven't done any research into any of this, but I think that would be a completely different conversation. I think right now we just need to stay focused on the cultivation.

Yeah. Thank you. Maybe we look at this for.

Yeah. In the future. I think this is something. Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you though, Stephanie. I appreciate it.

Okay.

So are we good? Did we get them?

So I think we're hearing allow building and remove the prohibition against ag exam structures. Is that correct?

Okay. Okay. So the next one is, let's see, visual impacts.

Yeah, so, sorry, let me finish my notes. So, right now, our code does say that, you know, cannabis in the exclusion zone can't be visible from the roadway. And in any zone, cannabis goods can't be visible from off-site of the business. And it says that you need privacy protection. screening security privacy screening, but it doesn't describe what that looks like it doesn't describe what screening looks like, and it would make it more efficient for staff to implement this code if we draft and create more requirements around what does what defines privacy. screening what defines visible from the road and that would help implement those standards so what i'm just looking for here is consensus for staff to review some better fencing and screening standards yes yeah how does the grower i mean growers feel that's acceptable i have a lot of personal thoughts from my district on this one

So I'd love to hear from the growers.

And again, I invite anybody out to our site to sort of see what we did. And again, we're very cognizant of this. We don't want to, I mean, we're set back into a hillside near ranches. So we basically have the whole farmland at the foot of a ranch and we are down a very, very secluded highway. So we don't have many neighbors. So we thought about that in picking the site. But what we did is we did an eight foot chain link cyclone fence along the county frontage We have very minimal county frontage road, and we're nowhere near a public highway. Most of the roads are owned by us as parcel owners. But we put a very basically non-see-through green screen fence. So I can send you the material. It's very, very good. It's a privacy screen. It's very cheap for the foot. And I would advise that you just set up, hey, we've got a specific color code. You can put a green, a brown, a sand color. So it's contiguous green, I think. Green's my favorite color. I'd lean towards green. It's agriculturally befitting, and it can be non-seafruit. It's very cheap. It's not like it's a huge cost, and then everybody's the same, and it's at least continuous.

I have no problem with the green screen maintenance of it, making sure that it is always intact. What you do see in agriculture is these screens go up and they're not maintained, and then you have a bunch of debris just flapping around in the wind because we have so much wind. But where my concern is, is you have... different landscapes. You have landscapes where certain cultivation is right now where it's very hidden. You wouldn't even know. I like that. That's why, and I don't see that we have the map on the agenda. I think we had asked for the map of locations to be on the agenda, so maybe that can be a future agenda item to make sure we talk about the map and the locations. Because I have another location where I have cultivation occurring that I went for a drive and couldn't believe what I saw because it's right there in your face, and that I have a problem with. Now, a green screen is not gonna hide that. Landscaping or something, I mean, if we're talking about open, think of San Juan Valley. And think about San Juan Valley being full of pot plants. No offense, sorry, cannabis. How are you screening it? It's an open, flat area. What can we do and what can we put in place that will screen these in a way that you take into consideration security, safety, all of that? So I'm open to hearing from growers, but also really would like to know what the board thinks, because right now I've got two scenarios and I'm looking at both of them going, Okay, this isn't working. What I don't want to see is young kids driving around, which they do in South County all the time, in their pickup trucks, and they race around and they burn rubber all over my roads because I see their burned rubber, and they're adorable, and it's wonderful to be young, but how... innocent are they to not even realize that they're going to go and just hop a fence and let's just grab some. And it's only good for a period of time. I mean, it's only there's a moment that it can be actually the crop can be cut and otherwise it's just weed. I mean, in the sense of weeds. But i don't want that risk and i don't want that impression on our county that it's accessible like that so what suggestions would you have from either the the the growers what could we do in flat areas where right now you can grow and there's nothing but maybe a a fence that is you know a bob wire fence

Yeah, so again, these are going to be things that once I receive policy direction, I will look more into and be able to come back to you with examples and proposals. As of right now, I don't have the ability to answer that question because I haven't done the applicable research needed to tell you what would be appropriate. I will tell you the specific property you mentioned has been notified of a public nuisance and we will be rectifying that situation. But I need to do a little more research and maybe consult with my industry professionals to see what would be appropriate. I did have a conversation yesterday exactly to your point, like how are we gonna shield something right there? What's allowed within our county code? what's allowed. There's a big curve right there. You have a line of sight issue. So there's going to be a little collaboration that will need to be done with other departments, with industry professionals, and to see what has worked elsewhere before we'll be able to answer your question. But as long as we are in agreement that it's something that needs to be addressed, I will begin doing all of that research.

I really hope that we can have that come back with some real good recommendations, because I think it's a great example of how the extremes, and I don't want one to be hurt just because their land is geographically shaped differently without having hills and stuff. So how can we make it a positive both ways? Does that make sense? Absolutely. Do we cover, because it says not viewable from the street, what if it's viewable from homes? Do we have anything in the ordinance on that, and do we have any concerns about that? I just think about the terrain in South County, and you have some homes up on hills, and they're going to be looking down on this. Is that acceptable? as long as it's 300 feet away from any off parcel residents that technically would be acceptable okay so right now let's uh the minimum i would say is that fencing with with the screen is minimum at the bare minimum but we need to talk about these flatland areas and have a better idea of what what options there are that we could put into a policy and right now the 300 foot thing i say we keep that until it becomes a problem but i do foresee it as an issue in the future

Okay.

If that's okay.

I'm just wondering, and I don't know what the feeling would be about this, but if you almost could incentivize you know, we want the fencing at minimum, you have to have the fencing, et cetera. But if you want to go into this, you know, with landscape, there's a lot more of an investment, right? But if there's an incentive for them to do that at maybe a reduced rate or whatever it is, we could potentially look at something like that where that's incentivized. At minimum, you have to meet these. We'd like to see this standard and we will incentivize you getting here to this standard. Possibly.

I can completely get behind that, not only with fencing and landscaping, but with security cameras. I think all of that should be, let's say, I'm going to hypothetically, nobody panic, throw a number out there. It's $5,000 an acre. But if you have this, this, and this, and you meet all of these things, and it keeps it safer, secure, and less visible, that we will come down to... $3,000. There should be a way that we can incentivize, say, yeah, if you're going to have it out in the open like that, that's a problem for me. So we need to charge you higher, but I still don't want it. So even charging the higher, and if the market is great and they're willing to pay it, it makes me go, ooh, that means that... that I'm not forcing them to do it. So how can we find a happy medium? I would be really happy to hear others and what they've done.

Got it. We will absolutely look into that.

Any comments? Okay. Okay.

All right. So have we given enough direction on that one, Stephanie? Absolutely. Okay, the next one is review setbacks.

Yeah. So, you know, not to call anyone out, but there is a cannabis grow that's near Highway 25, and I have smelled it. I'm sure everyone else has smelled it. I've received comments about it. You can smell the cannabis from Highway 25, and it is, you know, set back decently far. So I think this would be an issue in the future for our sensitive receptors. and potentially even our hemp exclusions. So this is kind of a two parter. I think we should review reinstating the 1000 foot buffer from sensitive receptors And I think we should consider maybe expanding the hemp exclusion zone buffer again and adding a few more items to it, such as our census designated places and state parks, again, which are only covered right now under the sensitive receptor, which is only a 600 foot buffer. And while you visually might not be able to see it, given certain scenarios, at this point, it is my impression that you will smell it.

Okay. Yeah, I'm going to jump in on this, a couple questions. First of all, I think that sounds good to me, I think, generally. I do think, though... We also need to – maybe I'm wrong on this, but we're going this direction. We're trying to get this here. We're going to tax it to try to make money. I think there's going to be some inevitability in some cases that you're going to smell it sometimes. I just think that's just inevitable to a degree. I don't think we can completely eradicate that. We want to be reasonable about it like you go to – Greenfield and for some reason the entire town smells I don't know they process it there what it is but we can we can be reasonable but I don't think we need to I don't think we're ever going to eliminate a complete I think we need to be real about that I'm open to the reverting to the thousand feet though for the sensitive receptor setbacks. I did have a question regarding the setbacks, though, with something that was mentioned as far as like, can't be within half mile of like a wine tasting or something like that. How does it work in terms of if there's an existing cultivation operation, and a wine tasting wants to open within a half mile, would they then be excluded from doing so? How would that work?

That is a really good question. I would consult with legal counsel, but essentially the existing use would most likely prevail.

Because the idea with that is we're saying we don't want to harm the wine tastings business by being that close. But if they feel comfortable with opening anyway, because maybe the geography is different, it's within a half mile, I would think we would want a wine tasting to be able to open if they find that it's not going to be an issue for them. So I think we should, I'd like to look into that and make sure that we're not excluding or preventing development of our wine industry.

I think exactly what you said would be the case. So the existing cannabis business would be allowed to maintain because they were pre-existing. But if the winery were okay with setting up that hospitality serving venue, knowing that that cannabis operation exists, then there's no prohibitions against doing that. But setting up a wine hospitality site after the establishment of a cannabis business would not then... provide us the opportunity to revoke the cannabis's license right yeah that yeah i would hope so yeah you can't move in and say get out of here now i'm here

If there's consensus on that, I don't know. Yes, Rosa Corral.

I would like to, I totally agree with the logic there. It makes sense to me. But the map and how close they are to the wineries, I really think we need to really be looking at that. I feel that the distance needs to be more than a half a mile. Especially when we're trying to promote a hospitality industry on the wine trail. And how can we do that if we're going to now all of a sudden be pushing cannabis? So I think we need to find a happy medium. But I really think that that map needs to be readdressed and where we're allowing cannabis.

When you say map, are you talking about the exclusion zone map? Mm-hmm.

Okay. Mr. Chair, I mean, I think having the map would be helpful for context as well, but I'm not necessarily, I'd like to see that before, because a half miles is pretty decent.

I'm not asking to change it now. I want that conversation to be a future agenda item with the map. I had thought it was going to be on this agenda. I thought we had said that we wanted to review that. But since it was an agenda, I'm assuming we have to do it for a future agenda item.

Stephanie, what is the setback for schools? Is that the 600 currently right now? And then it would go to a thousand? 600 linear feet. Yeah. Okay. Which and a thousand feet is okay. Is a thousand feet enough for our schools or should the schools be considered like a winery? I mean, these are our kids.

Well, it kind of goes back to what Supervisor Zanger said. What is enough? And we would probably have to do a ton of research to figure out how far cannabis smell travels.

I don't think it's so much the smell.

I think it's just kind of...

It's just, it's kind of protecting our community. It's going to smell no matter what, right? Like that's just, that's the bottom line. But I just wonder, you know, 600 feet, a thousand feet, but we're being super protective around our wineries, but we're not having this discussion around our kids. And I find that a little bit odd. And so I guess I would just propose that if we're going to do a half mile around wineries, I would like to see a half mile around schools.

Just schools alone? No, I would recommend parks, any, whether it's anywhere a child would go. That's where I'm at.

I don't know how that, without seeing the map, I don't know how that affects current cannabis permitted areas or if it's kind of like, no, let's do this now. Let's set this. But I just, I worry about that a little bit.

I think we probably need to come back with the exclusion zone specific issue, I think, is what we're going to have to do.

And I think getting and serving somewhat other places, what are normal standards elsewhere? Right now, we're just sort of throwing numbers out there. None of us are experts on how far cannabis smog goes and all that. And I don't want to make a reactionary decision or direction here. I think having this as a future discussion probably makes the most sense, just so we can wrap our head around it.

Okay.

Okay.

So did we give you kind of enough, Stephanie, on setbacks? Obviously, it's going to need to be brought back. Yeah. I think there was consensus that seemed like everybody was good with the 1,000, but is there a need for even an increase in some of the other sensitive areas?

Well, what I'm thinking based on your comments is that we'll just baseline increase the sensitive receptors to 1,000 feet, but maybe it's that we add schools, parks, census-designated places, state parks to our exclusion zone, and that would offer them the greater protection of a half a mile.

That seems to make sense to me.

And we can come back with a map.

Okay.

And I do have the hemp exclusion zone map up right now. It doesn't have the sites mapped, but if you wanted to see it, we could show it.

No, I need to look at it much more carefully. We'll just come back with this one, I think. Thank you, though. I appreciate you getting it so quickly. Okay, so we're moving on now to the permit revocation.

Yeah, so this kind of goes back to the discussion about background checks. So and then, you know, disclosure and accountability. So, you know, let's say that an individual party wasn't disclosed properly, and maybe that individual party would not have otherwise been permitted based on their background check. What sort of provisions or prohibitions would we want surrounding that lack of disclosure, essentially? And so essentially the question here is, should we immediately revoke a permit, make them remove this individual from their structure? Does that revocation last for a period of time before they're allowed to reapply? Mr.

Chair, zero tolerance. Yeah, I figured that was going to be the consensus here.

So essentially revoke their permit and then never allowed to apply again with the county?

Sounds right to me.

I don't know.

Do we want to go never or two years, five years? I mean, I don't know. I mean, never seems a little extreme for your first offense.

I would say like five years.

I agree, five years. Okay.

Five years.

Okay.

The next one's retail and agricultural districts.

Yeah, so this is just an oversight on county staff, and I'm county staff, so I'll just go ahead and apologize. Oops. At the November 2024 board meeting, when we adopted the code, the discussion surrounded, like right at the end of the discussion, that we should remove retail as a permitted use in agricultural districts. getting the agenda or the ordinance on the consent agenda i made the revisions but it looks like i maybe didn't upload the revisions so what was adopted and sent to american legal did not include that change so i'm here to apologize and say i would like to fix that and make that change and then another question i have is micro businesses are allowed with a cup in agricultural districts But a micro business can include three or four activities. So that's cultivation, distribution, manufacturing, and retail. That could be storefront retail or non-storefront retail. So I think it would be reasonable to allow non-storefront retail in ag districts, but not storefront retail if that follows the intent and the direction of the board.

Yeah. I'll just say I don't... Certainly... I don't think you need permission to correct the mistake, right? I mean, just like correct the code that we have there. And yeah, I would say no, certainly no storefront retail and ag. That doesn't really make any sense to me that we would have that. Right?

But non-storefront retail is reasonable?

What does that mean? What is non-storefront retail?

So essentially, someone could have a micro business and that's going to include most likely a structure that you can cultivate and manufacture cannabis in. If it's non-storefront retail, they would do deliveries. Someone could call in and say, oh, I would like to purchase this product and it would be delivered then to their door. And so there's no retail activities happening on-premise. It's all happening off-premises, essentially.

I don't want it. Sorry, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I don't think so. I don't want any of it.

Well, I would love to hear from the growers and see if you have any feedback on this before I say I'm not supportive or supportive. I'd love to hear, like, in a realistic world, what does that look like, and are you supportive or not supportive of it?

I'm a big proponent of focusing on your strengths and not focusing on your weaknesses. I would totally agree with you. Do not allow it because it will take up a lot of staff time. It will take up a lot of regulatory time. It will cost you guys a lot of money, and it's not going to be a – You know, this is an agricultural 65,000 population. No one's coming here to start a retail empire or a delivery empire. It's just not economically viable, so it's best you just don't focus on it and don't spend any resources or county resources on it.

Okay, perfect.

Sounds good.

Okay, none of it.

Great. Okay, fee slash cost recovery is next.

Yeah, so, you know, our current fee in total is $3,000. It's for two applications, your initial application and then your cannabis business permit license application. Now, I've spoken with Environmental Health and Public Works who review these projects with me. and the fee is enough to cover everyone's costs but it's just not um described in our fee code so right now the way it looks is just you know base 300 fee assumes it let's just assume it goes to planning right but you know there's there's 222 that goes to fire now there's 72 that goes to the assessors there's 222 that goes to environmental health and 240 for public work so we're We are recuperating all our staff costs. I just think we need to describe that better in our fee schedule. So I would like to bring an updated fee schedule to you that just shows those costs.

Great. I agree. Cool.

Perfect.

Yeah, go ahead.

I'm curious on... we're being asked to set the rate within this range. And I appreciate you saying that you're recovering the costs for kind of the permit review, et cetera. But I guess where I want to dive into is I want a cost analysis for what it's going to take to run this program entirely because i feel like that that really lends itself into i don't know what the proper rate is right like i'm hearing all these numbers but i don't know what we need to what we need to be collecting to at least cover all of our costs right we know there's going to be an increased cost we know law enforcement is going to have there's going to be an increase there there's going to be an So I guess I know it doesn't exactly fall under this item, but I don't know where else it's going to fall today. And so I just want to, I think we need to bring back a cost analysis of what this is going to cost the county to run this entire program, not just a review of the permit.

Okay.

And I don't know, I see our treasurer tax collector here, how much is it going to cost your department to the Ag Commissioner, the Sheriff's Department, all the departments, planning, everybody, we need to hear what your costs are going to be and have that analysis.

Mr. Chair, I don't know if I necessarily see the need for I'll give you the general analysis. We're gonna make a lot of money on this. And yes, there are costs, but it's not gonna be anywhere near. And I would, you know, I think there's, I think there's a little bit of a misnomer that we're constantly going to be sending out. You know, the sheriff's going to have to go out at times. They're going to do inspections. But we're not talking about a seven-figure cost to this sort of thing. I mean, this is significantly boosting our revenue structure. And I don't know what that's necessarily going to accomplish other than just putting on paper costs. essentially the amount of time that's going to be put into some of these routine inspections, but it's not as if, you know, and maybe if the sheriff wants to speak, I don't know if he does or not, but it's, I don't, I don't envision this being something where, you know, these are good players. We have zero tolerance policies. If you don't follow the rules, you're out. So I don't really see this being something where there's going to be this constant staff activity and dealing with these folks, really not much more than any other agricultural commodities. So I don't, I just don't necessarily see that level of need.

And I absolutely respect your point of view on that. I guess I just kind of feel like we cannot go into this blind. And by just picking a number out of the sky and saying, we're going to bring in a ton of revenue, i i just i want proof in that i guess and i will tell you i've talked to supervisors from other counties and every single supervisor that i have talked to do you allow it oh yeah we do be careful you're going to end up spending you won't get it sounds great it sounds like we're going to get all this revenue but the reality is and talking to other supervisors they're not bringing in the revenue that it is you know they're breaking even and so we have an opportunity to do this right here I think we should be looking at that cost analysis. But if that's not the direction you want to go, I mean, I hear you, but I just disagree.

I just think this is going to, like I said before, and we've said this all along, we went to the voters, we picked a range. It's got to fall within that range. I think the intent was always, because I was involved with this process when we were going through this, the intent was always to be not at the lowest, not at the highest, but somewhere higher. between the middle and the lowest so that you have room to grow over a very long period of time. And that was really the intent of going to the voters with 1,000 to 10,000. So I don't personally want to necessarily dwell on the back and forth. And I just think it's honestly just going to be a lot more talking and a lot more. And it's not really going to make a difference to have some sort of study that's going to cost taxpayers money to go into a study to show us a baseline dollar amount. We know that this is going to be higher than that. And if we feel like after a year, what I've called the pilot year, if we feel like after a year that we need to increase the tax, then we have the ability to do that. But I'd rather not just sit and keep having special meetings and the same conversation over and over again, because that's kind of the road. I would like to make a decision today. I just think we're at that point. We've got other matters to deal with. And I just, I don't want to get this hung up and processed like everything else. Thank you.

I know we don't want to be hung up in these meetings, you know, and talking about this over and over and over again. But for some reason, the concerns that Supervisor Sotelo has, I have, is that we need to ensure that we have a program and a program manager and enforcement team. who is our program manager are you going to be managing all of this including dealing with the the the enforcement issues and all i mean you're going to deal with all of it as one person

in coordination with code enforcement and potentially the sheriff's office and potentially the ag department. And of course, I will coordinate with the tax collector's office as well. So it will be me as of right now, but it's also me acting under the county executive officer who is actually in charge of administering the program and their designee who right now is Abraham and myself. And then it is, as everything always does, it takes coordination with our other existing departments.

With the workload that you have, with all the impacts of the department, what I'm fearful of, something's going to have to give. You can't do it all. You can't do all the things that we need you to do when we don't have the staffing levels that we need. We don't have the sheriff's deputies that we need. We don't have a South County deputy down there. We don't have any support services in South County. So I'm struggling right now with we're going to bring in enough money and it's just going to cover it. I don't know, talk about throwing a number in the air. I'll throw a number in the air, $5,000 an acre and you get deductions for all your service and your security and all the things you do that meet our standards. Because right now, I don't know how much this program is gonna cost and seeing how the application process is moving forward so quickly, we need to seriously make sure we're covering our costs.

Okay, if I may. Is there a way that we could just, without having to pay a consultant tens of thousands of dollars and spend months, is there a way we can get a quick, rough estimate of how much this is going to cost staff?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think I was asking for a survey and hiring a consultant, but I think every single department needs to come back with realistic numbers for what they believe will be the cost. Of course, after a year, you can reevaluate, but at least it's a starting place for us. But right now, we don't even have a starting place.

and i know that um jake it looks like wants to speak and i want to treat this like we did the the cleanup of the riverbed it was a collaborative effort from all the departments and so we need that kind of collaborative working together in order to make this a successful program otherwise i feel like we're setting ourselves up for failure

I wanted to propose something. I mean, I've been in cannabis programs in multiple counties, multiple states now for a little bit. So I've seen a lot of, you know, what works, what doesn't work. You know, don't go down the suit that Monterey County did. They developed a very bloated regulatory program that has five people who manage 15 farms. That's, you know, insane. So now they have $2 million of income and it all gets spent between sheriff, DA, and this sort of bloated bureaucracy that Monterey County is. you know this revenue should go back to to taxpayers and to citizens and to people in the county you know the roads roundabouts like there's so much here now like the sheriff's office and fire is going to spend much more on terrible roundabouts than it is on cannabis i would i think it is best to to learn from actual data instead of paying consultants and doing more staff time to analyze this because it's just a forecast Let's say that Stephanie comes to our farm to inspect and she brings five people. Does each department have an ability to log time and bill, just like a permit fee? If the sheriff bills their time of inspections to the individual operator and the maximum amount of the per acreage tax can go back into the residents, into the citizens, I think that's probably that's the best way to, I think, have a better county benefit is if you're inspected four times a year and it takes $1000 per inspection, it should be built to the license folder. Um, the treasury tax collector, you know, it's essentially a spreadsheet on a on a quarterly basis and Melinda is fabulous and her department is fabulous. So. All these things that already fit into what the county is already doing. I'd say Stephanie and Abraham's work is a tremendous workload. But, you know, she's doing it tremendously. And, you know, I think there's not going to be a tremendous amount of operators. This thing of 100 operators and you need a tremendous amount of staff. I think it can be a very streamlined process. Similar for ag. We're not growing more acres in the county. We're just growing different crops. You know, I started to submit spray reports. My neighbor has to do the same things that I do. The regulatory structures that are already in place can build into cannabis as though it's any crop. With cannabis, you have this illegality, federal illegality aspect to it. So there is this law enforcement component that needs to be underwritten. But in reality, it should be built to the operator or the landowner if there is an issue. Otherwise, the rest of the operators that do try and do things the right way bear the burden of potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars extra just to, and it'll just end up becoming a budget item where, hey, I've got some budget in cannabis, I need it. Build a reserve, let the residents take from it, and if it costs more than it is billed to the operators, then maybe more staff is needed. But I would try and see it as like, if you have an inspection, you get billed for the inspection. I'd be more than happy that if Stephanie and county council and five people come to inspect us all day, I pay the fee for the time.

So can I just ask a clarifying question to you? So if what I'm hearing is we would collect our business tax, that's just going to be whatever our flat rate is, Anytime we have to send sheriffs out to you for an inspection or whatever, anytime treasurer's department's working on anything, ag department, we're going to bill you for those costs. That would be separate from your fee that you're paying for your business tax. Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes.

Okay, I hadn't looked at it that way. So thank you.

And again, to give you context, Stephanie and a couple of staff have been out to our locations three times. In the two years we're coming up on, this will be our second year of operation. So we've had regular annual or biannual inspections from housing community development. I always welcome people to come to just see what a large cannabis operation looks like. But I was farming cilantro and peppers out there previously. No one ever came. Um, there'll be this thing of like, we're gonna be out here all the time. It won't happen. Um, they come out by annually. The state will come out annually. Um, you know, the Ag Commissioner will come out annually because we have to have postings. We have to submit spray reports and it's all registered. So if Michael from the Ag Department who's under Ken comes out, I don't want the Ag Department to bear that burden. I'm happy to pay the fee. That's different than regular agriculture. What I'd say is that I've seen it happen more and more in a lot of counties in a lot of states where the cannabis fund just gets used as a slush fund to fill budget back holes. I don't think that's the right thing to do for the residents. It really annoyed me when Monterey County did that and it just became a pet project fund. They killed the goose. Now they have no revenue and they built up this huge bureaucracy that was six million. Now it's down to two because Monterey County does not want to fire people. I don't think somebody should go down that same track. It's not the same economics as a county.

we need to fix roads we need to fix roundabouts no i love possibly this structure and direction i didn't know that that was a possibility i didn't i thought okay you guys are paying your business tax and you're kind of like hey that's going to all be included but if you're saying this is separate from that i could get behind that my question would be though for staff is that doable for all of you to be able to put something like that together see you

Excuse me, good morning. I do have a concern, and unless you're gonna contract a consultant to just operate when it's needed to do a monitoring, that's fine, but when you have staff that are full-time, what happens if they don't do any work? How do you pay those individuals that are being trained and everything to monitor those projects? You see what I'm saying? So if you're asking, they're gonna go and review your project at one point. We had to have a dedicated individual to perform those duties all the time. Because if you don't have them available by the time that someone calls, how are we gonna address that? And that's what I'm asking. Would it be possible? I'm not disagreeing with the model. I'm in agreement with the model. The only concern that I have is, how can we have this model with the consultant that does all the work and then have extra help or overtime for insurance deputies available to do the monitoring? Did that make sense to you?

Can I ask a question on that? Yes. Because now I'm getting confused. Was the intention to hire a consultant or separate positions to go check on cannabis every now and then?

I thought it was going to be done within... You're going to have to make some hard decisions because monitoring this type of business is not easy. There are requirements at the state level. There are requirements. They have to have staff to monitor those situations. I had that experience before, and trust me, it's not easy. So I will be cautious about What is requesting, I like the idea what you're requesting. I just concerned about how do we secure a contract with the consulting firm to help us to do that and to allow an allocation for overtime with the deputies needed for the situations for monitoring purposes.

If I could just speak to the current fee structure right now, of that $3,000 that goes to a couple other departments, it pays for about 16 hours of planning staff time. That covers the first initial site visit to review the site and then all the way through permitting. Then what we have is an annual inspection setup, which we never adopted a fee for because when we adopted the fee schedule for this, We hadn't done an annual inspection. We didn't know how long that was going to take the way. We are trying to operate the program to reduce staff time and use the resources we have available is that we do an annual inspection. I go out and make sure that they are still meeting the requirements and they submit to me their state annual inspection report because the state also goes out to do these inspections. So unless there's, like, an immediate public nuisance need that I need to go out and address, there's really no need for staff to be out there all the time inspecting this business. So I get the state reports. If the state's requested any amendments, then the cultivators will make those adjustments, and then they'll submit me the state's sign-off. So as long as the state's signing off and their meeting are – there's really no need for staff to be out there all the time and inspecting. And so right now what's working is that I'm charging them hourly staff time for my annual inspection and for their permit renewal. And that would actually be my recommendation for what the fee should be when we establish the annual renewal fee, because it's hard to average a time spent because all of these projects are so different. They span, some are bigger parcels, some are smaller parcels, which means my time spent inspecting those parcels ranges, right? So as of right now, planning staff are collecting our costs. I can't speak for the future of the tax collector. As of right now, I don't want to speak for the sheriff, but I don't believe we've sent you out to any of the approved cannabis grows. So there hasn't been any sheriff need for intervention. So I think some of these might be non-issues at this point because we're not seeing that. But they could be charged in the future if we want to add an inspection fee for other county departments. We could potentially set up maybe a baseline fee or an hourly fee for that inspection if there were to be some nuisance or code enforcement issues. So I'm really seeing that we're collecting those costs right now and that it's not an issue in terms of implementing the program.

adding to that just slightly the tax code as adopted by the voters does provide for um a fee to be adopted by the board for the treasurer tax collector time investigating verifying opining on the request for the adjustments and separately we also have provisions for cost recovery under code enforcement as we mentioned specific to cannabis beyond our standard fines and fees there's a two thousand Sorry, $1,000, $2,000, $5,000 escalating violation fine specific to cannabis, and for unpermitted cultivation, unpermitted, unlicensed cannabis, $10,000 per day violation fee. And so those are to target the bad apples, so to speak, while the tax is just general revenue for the county to spend. Melinda?

Rebecca, you just gave us $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, something like that. I'm just, what would be like the one, where in it do you decide, or we just get to choose between?

So the first violation is $1,000. It's an escalating fine per violation per day.

And I think we've seen that like that model doesn't work, right? Like you have, hypothetically, you have an illegal grow. We're just going to charge you $1,000 a day? No.

So an illegal row would go under the $10,000 per day. Per day? Yes.

The fines she mentioned are for permitted grows who are violating the county's regulations.

But we can't go in there and just destroy it?

It depends on the – we would need appropriate authorities to do so to abate it, but we could do so.

But if it's an illegal grow, what kind of appropriate authority do you need?

We would likely get a warrant from the court to have officers go out and abate it and have had that granted in the recent past. Okay.

This year. And if you had more questions about illegal grows, the sheriff could definitely speak to that. Their office handles those. They just come and check with me and make sure they're not permitted, and then they handle everything elsewhere. So for a permitted cannabis operation, it's in our code that we work with them during a violation to abate that violation. We can revoke their permit immediately, but the goal is to work with them to achieve compliance and not necessarily immediately take away their permit. So it's different when it comes to a permitted grow and when it comes to an illegal grow.

So one of the items that we were talking about previously was zero tolerance. Where would it be zero tolerance versus a fine? Can you give me an example of where I'm going to find you versus we have this zero tolerance policy and you just you've lost your permit? Yeah.

So let's say maybe their security camera failed one day. You have to have 24 hour security camera or you accidentally left your gate open. Your gate needs to be open for 24 hours. closed and locked at all times that is something that you know we'll work with you on to fix that how would you know that if their camera goes out for a couple hours overnight how would you know that we have the authority to check at any time their camera system we have authority to go on site at any time and check their properties so planning staff the county county staff we have the authority to review these things at any point in time whenever we wish now um If it's something like they did not disclose a financial interest holder who maybe has been arrested for some illegal activity that we know about, that in my eyes would be a zero tolerance issue. Okay.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate that.

I think we had a comment from our expert.

So according to Measure D, the treasurer tax collector is responsible for basically collecting the tax, whatever you set it at. So we work with a company on our business license program, HDL. We work with them because it keeps everything very subjective. We don't have to... You know, there's no opinion on what that business is doing or how many people they have or whatever. And they also collect our quarry tax money. So I've had a couple of conversations with them regarding the cannabis tax, right? It would still keep it very subjective and they would collect the cannabis tax. So number one, I'm hoping that you keep this very simple because I'm going to have to work with RMA to get the growers and how much their acreage is and pass that on to HDL. HDL is then going to send out reports to these growers to ask them what they normally do with the mining taxes. They ask them how much they've mined. However, if we just do it by acreage only, then I just have to work with the RMA department and then HDL will send out invoices to them. So the charge that HDL would charge would be deducted from the revenue that they send us. That's how that works with our business license. What exactly how much they would charge, I don't know at this point because I haven't been able to further this conversation with them. So what's my time? My time is working with RMA to get the information regarding the acreage that you set today. So I don't really have a whole lot invested, a lot of time invested in it. I just can't start this January 1st if I have a raid or some acreage or something to go by and I need to have a conversation, I need to further my conversation with them as to what they're gonna charge us to do that. So anyways, that was my,

i wanted you to know what our department does yeah yeah melinda if someone wanted to come in and the only way that they'll be able to pay is through hdl or could they potentially come into the treasurer's office and pay there

We normally have people pay through HDL. They send them an invoice, but there are some instances where people under the business tax or even the quarry tax come into our office and pay. Okay, thank you.

I just know that sometimes it's a little bit different with this business.

We don't turn people away. Okay, thank you.

Okay. Any further discussion then on that, how we want to proceed?

I mean, I just would like to set a rate and just, you know, again, this is the first year. It's set at a reasonable rate. If it's a little on the low side, we look at that going forward. But I just, I don't see it being productive to keep, you know, coming back over and over. But I do understand, you know, there's questions, there's concerns. But I think we're at the point now where like what would we be continuing this really truly for? As the treasurer said, she has to have time to go and deal with the folks that are going to be overseeing this. I would just like to try to come to a reasonable agreement on a rate so that we can set something up for this first year with the understanding that this, you know, this is something that's gradually going to change over time.

Okay.

And I think, you know, chair Zenger had thrown out the number of $2,500 an acre. I, you know, and I think I'd be willing to talk about something around there, but I don't want to get to a point where we're throwing out numbers that are, again, the intention of this was a long-term outlook. And, um, and that gives us a lot of flexibility over time, 10, 15, 20 years, as opposed to coming back every four, eight, 12 years. Um, And I don't want this to be a situation where we choose a rate that is going against everything we've talked about, which is being more welcoming to the good players in this industry and really kind of going more down the road of what happened in 2018, which was really just setting up rates that were unsustainable because there are certain people in this community that just don't want this industry. And I just don't want to see that being repeated again. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, just so we get an understanding, is there any interest in setting a rate today among any of the supervisors that want to speak to that right now or no? Are we going to push this off? Just so we know how to continue.

I'd really like to see some costs because you just heard Melinda. She doesn't know how much it's going to cost. I really love this model of us being able to bill. But I think what our CEO is pointing out is that, yes, we can bill some of those, but we're going to have to have full time employees. So some of that isn't going to be billed out. Some of that is going to be built in. So let's just ensure. And here's the thing, too. Like, I want to be really careful in this. One of the most challenging things about sitting up here has been this. perception from the community that like around all of the growth things, right? And there has been decisions that were made in the past around development that we essentially gave our county away. I don't wanna make that same mistake with this. And so I feel that this topic develop, it warrants us putting some time and research And really thinking about these things. I want to support the people that are doing it right. I want your business to be successful. But I also have to, in sitting in this seat and representing all of my constituents, I have to make sure there's a community benefit, right? And so I just don't want to repeat mistakes in the past where we didn't do enough research, we didn't do enough, and then we're left, you know, I don't want five years from now, 10 years from now, a different board is sitting up here and they're like, what the hell? Oh, were they thinking? They didn't even do any research. They just picked a number from the sky and went with it. I don't want that. I want us to be very, very intentional about what we're doing. And I don't want to repeat mistakes from the past. And so that's why I guess I'm being kind of a thorn in the side right now is I really would like to make sure we're very careful with this. And I would like to see some costs. So that's just kind of where I'm coming from. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, but is it possible to get all of our requests out now so that we can come back? It sounds like there's going to be an interest in continuing this and that's fine, but can we just get all of our requests out for information now so that we don't come back in another month and say, well, now there's another reason why we want to put this off for another month. So let's have another meeting a month from now and do more analysis and more costs and more staff time. And these things that are really just prolonging the inevitable, which is setting a reasonable rate. So If we have requests, if we're gonna continue with this, can we just get them all out on the table now so that we can come back and finally make a decision on this and not just do the whole process for one, two, three, four years sort of thing?

Might I propose a suggestion? If interested, you could set a rate today via resolution, and we could do all this research because I don't exactly have a timeframe of as to when we'll get back to you. Obviously, we'll get back to you as soon as humanly possible. But code amendments do have to go to the planning commission 1st, and then they'll come back here. So it could be that it's 2 months or 3 months. I could not give you an accurate timeline. But if you set a rate today, that would allow you to start taxing on January 1st. And then when you come back with your requested information, you could reset that rate at a different rate once you have all the information you're asking for. But you risk not being able to tax come January.

Supervisor Curro had something, and then I think the sheriff wants to jump in.

So is this our second or our third meeting on this? We did the special meeting because at the last meeting, I think I was pretty clear. I think Supervisor Sotelo was pretty clear. We wanted to see the impact, cost, and a program from staff. We also wanted to see the map of where the locations are. Your presentation today is beautiful, but we still have no cost. We still have no, I still don't feel totally comfortable. You're saying that you're the person that when these complaints and these issues come through, you're gonna go out alone and inspect. I have safety concerns. No offense, I'm talking about bad characters.

I go out with code enforcement. We don't do anything alone. It's not the standard rule of our department.

Does code enforcement carry a gun? No. No. So you're, again, just two people out there in South County, no cell reception. There's I'm sorry, I'm looking at the sheriff smile at me because he knows I know there's a lot of bad characters in South County that can take advantage of all of the fact that we don't have enough. We don't have enough staff. We don't have enough people monitoring. How do I find out about these things? I have people call me and go, do you know there's an illegal grow? Do you know it's over here, it's over here, it's over here? Well, that's fine. We're talking about legal grows, but how are we going to manage these if we don't have a full program in place? That's my fear. I love the idea of the fees, the fees for inspections and stuff. I think that's great. I think that could solve a lot of this. And we could set a fee, but we don't even know what those fees would be. So I'm struggling right now because I asked for this in the last meeting. And here we are, and you're upset at us because we're not willing to set a number when we didn't get the information that we asked for in the first place.

Well, hold on. If I can just, Sheriff, did you have, do you want to come up and speak? Why don't you come? Because you've been standing there. Why don't we have you here?

Oh, the runer of fun, law enforcement. And I wrote notes so that I don't talk too long, Supervisor Kosmicki. So I think it's important for me to get some things on record since we're talking about this. I think the community expects that from the Sheriff's Office, but I definitely don't want to be a thorn in the side of this process because I am supportive. Tongue in cheek, I will say that we've heard this many times that I've been doing peppers or I've been doing this or I've been doing that and you guys don't come out. I don't currently have any open homicides regarding cilantro, but I have open homicides regarding cannabis and marijuana. And so we have to come in as law enforcement and be the bearer of bad news that there is a side to this industry, not in this room, but there is a side to this industry that's not great. But I also want to point out that this is, I'm kind of beyond the fact that this is a new industry. It's not a new industry at this point. Matter of fact, I was involved with this stuff when I was a captain here years and years ago when we were talking about, when we did make over burdensome, not on the sheriff's side, but it was overly burdensome for people to come and be able to do this. So I just want to get a few things on record so that I stay on topic. My opinion, as your sheriff, the people of the state of California, when this came up, were promised an economic boon when we approve marijuana in this state. A lot of us law enforcement leaders didn't believe that that was going to be the case. And we asked for proof. Show me in Colorado. Show me here. Show me there where they are so better off. because we brought this into our community and nobody could ever show us that. Now in this meeting today, we're seeing that the industry are saying the taxes are even burdensome and have stunted the growth of the industry. And I just think it was funny that it was us at first that are being skeptical of this, but we were being outcast that we just didn't care about what the voters wanted in the state. We're just trying to point out some things that we were concerned about, just like in this meeting today. But since the industry came out of the shadows and we used to laugh that a lot of guys would say that they operated in the gray market and sort of like, well, you know, you're getting good at growing marijuana, not because you just started yesterday, but maybe because you were doing it for a while. But I'll tell you what, in this process, the first process that we did here in this county, when we interviewed and we met so many people in this industry, the good guys, I met entrepreneurs, scientists, botanists, people that wanna do things the right way for the right reason. They stepped up during COVID in this community and gave to this community. We had one dispensary here that was completely switched out their operation and was making hand sanitizer instead of processing their product, gave it to this community. So I'm on board. I think that this can be a great thing, and I think it can be a positive for our community if we do it correctly. but not everybody that comes into this industry is industry is honest not everybody is good and unfortunately that's the world that i live in is dealing with the people that aren't good so that you don't have to um so again to go back to kind of i have not investigated any cartels or any hostile nations that are involved in the lettuce industry But in this county right now, we have Chinese nationals and we have Mexican cartels that are running illegal marijuana grows. It is my job to protect their industry to make sure that the ones that are coming in here to do this correctly aren't being driven out of town by the ones that are operating in the shadows. That's the impact it's gonna have to my office. The greatest thing that I've heard today is that we're not really part of this. That's great. I don't want it. I don't want the program in my office. I don't want to be the tip of the spear when it comes to cannabis enforcement. I do think that there's going to be some involvement in the Sheriff's Office, but if this is going to come out of Public Works, RMA, and Code Enforcement, then I'll be your biggest cheerleader in that. But I will say, when hemp came in, and we had hemp here for a little while, our activity went through the roof. I'm not being dramatic. We had... crews from the valley, from Stockton, and from the Bay Area, routinely coming down here and ripping people off, assaulting people. And it was up in North County more than anywhere. They were coming right off Pacheco, hitting these farms and getting out of town. They were stealing from them and beating people up. And we saw a huge increase in calls for service because the greater community knew that we were operating in this industry here. They knew that we had good guys, nice people that were growing this stuff that aren't armed to the teeth to have a shootout, and they're being victimized. And so that's a thing that I can see coming onto our office. I think, For me, I've tried to work very closely with the county and try to make this, and I've talked to Supervisor Kosmicki about this a few times. I know Supervisor Tello, we've talked about it. I felt like the state has a lot of burdensome things to go through to get this permit. Why are we gonna make it more difficult? I said if a bank came into this community and wanted to open a bank, those get robbed. We don't make them jump through a thousand hoops to prove to us that their cameras work every day and their security guards show up to work. So why are we doing that to this industry? Like that's a risk that they're taking. And we're being honest with you that I got three guys. So when guys show up with guns to rip off your stuff and assault you, we're probably not coming anytime soon. If we want the sheriff's office to be running the program or with an accurate response time because we have South County deputies, then we're going to have to add staff because I don't have enough. But we already know that we don't need to go through that song and dance. The folks in the industry here today, and those that are watching I'm sure would love to pay as little as possible. It's a business, I support business, I support capitalism, I'm into property rights, I'm into all that kind of stuff. I kind of have an affinity for the constitution of this country and I think that people should be able to come in here and make money and contribute. But I'm with what Supervisor Sotelo was saying and I think Supervisor Kuro has mentioned it before too. Not your fault or anyone in this room but sins of the past have put us backwards in this county. Tax sharing agreements, the way we've been just treated poorly by our partners here locally have put us in a position where we don't have any money. when we talk about amazon coming in or google coming in or a development coming in we don't just talk about how many cops do i need we talk about economic development and how is this county going to survive i don't think we're in a position to be giving deals anymore we don't have enough cops we don't have enough our people in rma we don't have enough staff here we don't have enough revenue we've just went through layoffs So I think that the voter, this is my opinion as Eric Taylor, as your elected sheriff, the voters gave you a range of 1,000 to 10,000. Why are we not starting in the middle and then adjusting from there? Don't go out and rake these people over the coals to try to squeeze every dollar out of them. But when I first got here, there was a big road race that Stanford University would put on in the Pinoch Valley. And I had to ask them, why are you guys coming all the way from Stanford University to do a bike race here in the Pinoch Valley? They said, because it costs 25 bucks. That was the reason. Nowhere else in the state of California can you pay $25, not have to have any law enforcement, not to shut roads down, not to have to do anything else. 25 bucks, have a fundraiser, come into our community. mess up Mr. Wattis' operation when he's trying to drive cattle down Pinoche Road. Sorry, Mr. Wattis, you're the best. But it's that type of stuff that I want to see us avoid because I have an office, you have a county to run. We have people, and going back to it a little bit, and it's shocking these aren't on my notes, so I'm talking more than I'm supposed to, Supervisor, I'm sorry. But we did have an actor here, a bad actor, who was getting fined $1,000 a day And happily paid $30,000 and $31,000 a month to continue that illegal operation in perpetuity because we didn't have any teeth, we didn't have any staff, we didn't have any way to go after them. So I've used that example with supervisors to tell us, like, I had one guy here who was growing weed and was happily coughing up, like, it was like a non-issue to him to cough up $30,000 a month. So I'm not saying that everyone's in that same boat, and I'm not saying that if you set a rate, it's not my job to set the rate, but if you set a rate and we find out that it's just over burdensome and it's going to kill this industry, that you come back and you adjust it. I just want to caution, as your elected sheriff, to say that we have a revenue problem here. Please, please, please think about that. It's not just that these fine folks that are in this room are going to be a taxing thing on the sheriff's office, but they're going to come in and bring an industry that's going to make a bunch of money then the county side of me the elected person side of me thinks that we should grab some of that um and the resident side of me wants it to be safe while it's being done so that's what i have i'm open to any questions i'm sorry i talked so long thank you sheriff um okay thank you for the comment look i i don't think we're going to get anywhere today with yeah go ahead

Well, based on Stephanie's recommendation, and it sounds like we could set a rate that then could be adjusted, I would be okay starting high. If you want to just set a rate for setting a rate sake, it's not going to be the realistic rate, but I'm open to that if you all are okay with setting it high. But I'm not going under. I'm not even going to tell you where I'm not going under. We can do that today, but I'm going to aim on the high side.

Mr. Chair?

Yes.

I agree we need to set a rate so we can keep the process moving forward. If we push the rate too high, I'm gonna probably bring the sheriff back up here. If we push the rate up too high, doesn't that push bad characters into play? Because I know there's a happy medium. There's a happy sweet spot where you don't have to go down into the gray area of the business. And I want to make sure that we keep you out of that gray area because that gray area is the no tolerance area. If there is even one little backdoor, because here's the thing. You grow here, you pay your tax here, and then they cut a deal and it goes out into the illegal market. How do we stop something like that? We don't. I'm just saying it. You don't have to say it. I can say it. We don't. We don't have power over any of this. So I'm very concerned about if we set it too high, that we're going to push people into that gray market that we know is out there, where you can look like you're a good guy on the front. No offense. Please do not be offended by any of these things. This is just people that I have spoken to across the state that have gone through this process in their counties, and they say, yeah, we set the rate really high, and then all of a sudden our good guys became kind of sort of bad guys because they were doing stuff on the side. How do we set the rate where we, and we can't ask for your books, but I will set a rate today and I want a commitment that a sheriff's deputy for South County is funded in the first round of these revenues. We have to show South County that they have a voice. Because right now, you're going to make all the money in South County, and South County is not going to get any benefit out of it. And I need a sheriff's deputy to show we got something for this process.

I think for me as the sheriff, I want those in the industry to understand that we're supportive. which wasn't the case in Sheriff Land a few years ago, right? Nobody wanted cannabis to come into their communities. I'm supportive. We're a ranching farming community. I want farmers to come here and prosper and have great businesses and contribute back to the community, to our tax base, and help us grow as a county. I am not gonna be able to ensure any type of success for their industry when we have the bad actors that are gonna be hanging around if we don't capture revenue. If I was opening a cannabis operation and you had a $1,000 to $10,000 range, I would be praying you're gonna do $1,000 because that makes sense on the business side. And I think that that's a very nice thing and they can prosper and make more money. I get it. That's great. I just think that we're going through as a county right now that we can't overly be friendly to the detriment of not being able to protect them from the people that are gonna be coming after them. And this industry is different. I'm sorry if people don't like hearing that, it's different. It's different because of the gray market, it's different because, If a cartel or Chinese nationals are making money on this right now in the shadows, anybody that comes in here is taking business away. And I need to protect these folks from them and still go after them with three guys. So... Again, I am so on board and understanding what Supervisor Kosmicki is talking about. We don't want to lock people out. We don't want to make this a thing where it's not even worth trying to come here because then it's all for nothing anyway. Why are we even doing this? No one's going to come here. But I also don't want to be a sucker. and have people come and say, well, it's gonna be really difficult to get up and going. This is a budding industry, get it? It's a budding industry, and we're trying to get our feet under it. And I'm gonna call that out a little bit and be like, this is not new. This has been done in other states. It's been done in California for a long time. We've seen some communities start to get ahead for it. City of Hollister has had cannabis in their city for a long time, almost ever since I've been here. I've been here since 2014. So it wasn't long after I got here that this all started to change under the Medical Marijuana Act and all that type of stuff. So I think that there is a footprint or there's a blueprint as to how this can be done correctly. And I think that I'm trying as hard as I can to be all in with all of you to make this successful. My only caution is I just want to make sure that When we look at the 4th Street Bridge that sits in the city of Hollister and we wonder why it's not getting fixed and we find out that someone some a long time ago said, well, it'd be really nice if the county takes half of the responsibility for a bridge in the city. that kind of stuff needs to stop around here. I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of all of you getting called on the carpet and us not being able to provide the service to the people in this community because of these deals that were made a long time ago that have strung us to these agreements to where we're always coming out behind. And I wanna stand up for the county residents in that everybody in the city is a county resident too. I want to stand up for everybody in this county that pays for your services and understand that what you are all trying to do with a very finite amount of money. And so now we're going to be bringing another industry. And it's almost the same argument that we have with developers. If we're giving developers breaks on every fee that we can be charging them, what are we doing? We're not in a position. We're not NAPA. We don't have the money where we can just say, oh, just pay some in lieu of one time fee and then we'll stop collecting from you guys because we want to be really cool people. And and I'm just that's just my brutal honesty with the folks that are coming into this industry is like you're coming to a place that doesn't have services. We don't have staff. You have one person working. running every other thing that she has to do in her job every day that's not this, and then we're going to add this. You have Melinda's office. You have the state coming in telling us we're going to have to stop using retired annuitants in this state. I know Mr. Slavich and I think Melinda, we're going to be crushed. Because those are going to have to roll into either be absorbed by somebody else or going to have to be full-time positions. Because the work's not going to go away, but all of our 960 retired annuitants are going to get cut off. Riverside County, I just talked to Sheriff Bianco. They were given a cease and desist. By Friday of one week, they had to get all of the retired annuitants out of their courthouse. It has to be all full-time people now. So it's happening. It's coming. And so those are the concerns that I have going forward when we're talking about these type of things and trying to capture in a fair way the money that you can get now that's reasonable. And so none of that probably answered your question. But We need to set the rate in a way that's fair for the business, that's fair for the residents, and that puts us in a position to be able to get a South County deputy. I'm not coming in here saying I want six guys or I need a team. That's probably what a lot of people expected is that I'm going to go for another grab. Like, oh, you guys going to bring something else in? I need, I need, we all need. But so I'm trying to say like, let's try to do with what we have, with the system they have in place, with support from our office that's reasonable, especially if it's not gonna sit in my office, then I'm even more on board. But in order for us to go after the bad actors, we need staff. And if this is a revenue stream that we can capture, that's why I'm saying like, in my opinion, super uneducated opinion i'm just a cop right set it in the middle and then we can adjust from there and and if it needs to go lower and but it looked to me on the chart that when you're talking about two and a half percent to five percent it's fifty thousand dollars in san diego county if anybody doesn't know is like 50 million dollars everywhere else $50,000, $100,000, a million dollars for this county is life-changing for us. And so I just needed to make sure that our team knows and the people that support me know that we're looking out for the residents of San Benito, but we're also trying to be business friendly. And it's not a comfortable place to be because I think in the perfect world, come on in at $1,000, let's get this show on the road, let's start making some money together and have good partnership. I just think it's easier. to lessen than it is to increase. So that's just my opinion. Sorry if I didn't answer the question.

It's okay. You kind of sort of not really didn't really at all, but that's okay. I liked your comments. So could we, because we know we have some really good groups here, could we do a tier system where if you're coming in and you're new, you're starting at $5,000 an acre. And if you are showing year after year no infractions, no bad dings, and everything's going along, that the first year you're $5,000, the second year you're $4,000, the third year you're $3,000, and then you don't go any lower. And so you start off high. But if we have existing customers or customers, Cannabis people. I don't know what to really call you guys. But if we have existing ones that have been showing a track record, that they would have like an exemption and start because they've been producing right now and meeting those standards. So they start at a lower rate. Is that an option? Because where I'm trying to get at is if we get it too low, we're going to have an issue. If we get it too high, we're going to have another issue. I'm trying to find the sweet spot.

Supervisor Crowe? I appreciate the creative thinking with that. I think it's an interesting idea. But I also kind of feel like it might get overcomplicated a little bit. I feel like We need to remember, too, that we can move it, right? We can move it up and down. I think whenever we want, as far as I understand, we can move it a month from when we set it. We can move it two months. We can move it around as we need. I almost wonder if that's the better way to go, just setting some kind of rate and just moving it as needed as opposed to a tiered system because I – I don't know. I feel like it just could get a little overcomplicated with that one personally.

It is more work, and we want to keep it simple for our tax collector. And so I can see that. I'm just trying to come up with a compromise of how do we make sure that we're not pushing this envelope too far.

And Mr. Chair, I think it would actually open the door for liability issues. There'd be a lot of discretion on the staff as to who's a good player, what violations constitute. You get to have your rate lower. I don't even know if we legally can do what's being... I appreciate the creative thought process, but I don't even know if we legally could do that based on the way that the...

Well, if they're being fined, it could change their rate, but there has to be documentations of that.

But I'm in favor of basically, you know, if you're showing that you're not following the rules, you're out. Like that to me, that's the way that we root out the bad players as opposed to trying to complicate them.

having a tiered tax structure which sort of has a favorites mid-level and you guys are on the verge it's just an idea yeah can i ask what at this point i know we talked about maybe setting it now i'm moving on would it would it be better for everyone if we just came back relatively soon with a rough cost estimate and we could set the rate then do we want to do that or do we want to try to set something now and then come back or do you guys just want to like throw out what your your number is you know and then we can

basically just start the process because again, we don't have a fifth supervisor.

It makes it very interesting.

We're going to have to compromise on some level anyway.

Well, I guess I thought I heard Stephanie say that if we just select a rate today, we can change that so as long as we set we could set it at whatever number it doesn't have to be the real number but at least it gets the process started and moving forward and that's why i said i'm willing to do that i don't know what that ultimate number is going to be without some more and if we don't want to bring it as a full board i'm okay with that i'll go get the information myself just so i know the the number that's going to work for me um but i'm willing to set the rate just so that we can continue moving forward It's just we're going to set a rate that probably isn't realistic. That's not going to be the rate that we end up charging. But for all intents and purposes, I don't want to start a number that is too low because I think it's going to be harder, especially as we're in this. You don't want to tell somebody, oh, we're going to charge $1,000 when we're going to come out at $5,000. So I'd like to do it on the higher end just so that. You know, it's kind of like when you go to a restaurant and they tell you it's going to be 30 minutes and then they seat you in 15. I'd rather err on the side of caution. And so I'd rather aim a little higher and be willing to kind of come down and find out as we continue researching and getting more information what that proper rate should be.

Now, with that, it's not going to affect, I'm saying, are we in danger at all, setting too high, and then our farmers, are we calling them growers or farmers?

Farmers.

Farmers, yeah, that sounds good. Okay, our farmers are like, it's not going to ruin their current business, I guess, if we set something today that's too high. That's my concern. Because I don't know how quickly we would be turning that over and getting something more accurate.

Abbott, go ahead. I'm an economics person. You've set a cap, or the county has set a cap of 2000 canopy acres to get to. Now we're still in early innings. You just said we've got 800 acres that's on paper, but in reality, 380 acres are done. That's a 15% utilization of your maximum tax base. Now, if I want to expand the utilization of my tax base, You want to try, when I joined Apple TV, they started at $399 to get people. And then now that I've got a captive user base, and as I come here as a grower, I love this county. I love the people in the county. I love the people that I farm with. I love my neighbors because this is a great county to be in. Now, people coming to the county, they don't know that yet. They're going to come to the county because it's got a favorable business climate and a low tax rate. If you set it low until you meet your utilization, you can then titrate upwards every three to six months because at that point, people will have invested here. There needs to be a base to cover costs and to get the department's resources. and i think every single one of the growers here like there's basically three guys it's your tax base is three guys at the minute who've put a lot into this county to try and set up a good structure i would just caution you from like don't go too high too soon otherwise that 380 might move to 320 or it might move to 400 but it's not going to get to 2 000 very quickly and 2 000 acres may sound like a lot but my neighbor in front of me is doing three and a half thousand acres and you wouldn't even know it So it's not a tremendous amount of acreage in respect to all the acreage in San Benito. I would just say, and again, I'm biased in this, so just take my bias with a grain of salt. Start low, get a captive audience, and then titrate upwards. That is the subscription model that works for every large corporation from Netflix to Apple to Hulu to everybody. But if Apple starts at 20, they're going to lose business to Disney and Netflix. It's the same economic model, essentially. So I just caution that. He set it too high and people aren't going to leave Santa Barbara to come here. He set it too high and people aren't going to leave the desert to come here. People want to come here, but they're only going to come here if the land acreage is at X price and the tax is at lower price. But once they're here and invested here, it's very hard to move. So just keep that in mind.

Thank you. Okay. So then we want to set something today and then refine it is what we're talking about, right? Is there consensus on trying to do that right now?

I'm good with that.

Okay. So... I heard 5,000 from our sheriff. I think Supervisor Kuros said 5,000 at one point. I know a month ago or so, I threw out 2,500. Where do you guys want to go with this? Somewhere between those numbers? I don't know. What do you guys want to do as far as the current set? Does anyone have any opinion on that?

The last comment really moved me because of the incentive part of it, but we have to have a commitment that we're going up.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm not comfortable with 2,500. I'm just not. I'm sorry. I'm just not comfortable with 2,500 until we know. So if we set it, you know, it's a beginning step. And if we set it too high, I think we're going to not draw the people that we need to draw to actually – get the whole 1,000 acres this first time and then the 2,000 acres in the future. So my concern is finding that happy medium. I am not a psychic. This is not my business. I don't know your profit margins. If I could have your books, I could do some analysis for you. I could come up with some numbers. I could make it really easy that I could say, hey, I think you could do it in this range. So I definitely have to be closer to to my number than the 2,500.

Okay, thank you for that. What do you got then?

Do you want me to throw a number out?

I don't want to negotiate. I'd like to just hear a number.

I feel like I am so on the spot.

I'm not married to my number. Here's the thing.

You have to also think about this politically. And I'm sorry to bring politics into this. We are a board of four. In December, we will be a board of five. Whatever happens in this election will dictate where this goes. So whatever number we hit today, most likely it could be a totally different number by January. So I'm just bringing the politics into it.

Or we all agree and we're just – I think ideally we're all on the same page. I don't – I think we're all acknowledging that this isn't a perfect science. But for me, it's all about trying to, again, maximize – I agree with the sheriff. We don't want to give away the – these puns. There's too many puns. Sorry.

Too many puns.

You know, we don't want to do that. We want we have to look at this as if we are a business and that we want to have a long, sustainable model for success. And so I'm not stuck to any number. That's why I'm saying I'd like to hear a number. Let's just get it out there. And then we can bring back the costs and some general cost analysis that the staff can provide. And we'd have a decent baseline. And we're going to learn from the first year is my big mantra that. We have the ability to adjust one way or the other. But I do appreciate the sheriff's comments. We don't want to lowball it. We don't want to necessarily highball it so that we're hurting ourselves in the end as a county who's, you know.

Can I ask the question just directly to the growers? If we set a number that's too high and you leave, that's what I don't want to have happen. I don't want that. And I get it. But I also totally understand where the sheriff's coming from with his comments. We have the public gave us a range. And if we go too low, they're going to look at us like you gave away the farm. No pun intended. So I need to find something that's not going to hurt you to the point that we can't adjust it as we get more numbers. So I feel like this is like on me right now as a District 4 supervisor. I feel like the number has to come out of my mouth.

The reason why I stepped up is because you did mention that I said 5,000, which I guess...

I gave you permission to speak again, I guess.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, sir. Sorry.

The only power we have up here.

Permission to speak? It's an open dialogue. Okay. When I come up here and say we're just cops, I mean, I'm just trying to think this is a very simplistic way, right? And just hit the middle because then I think we're satisfying everybody. That was just my quick thought to make sure that we're standing up for both sides at the same time. But when you get into rooms with these folks that have been doing this for a while and that are experts and are This is going to be a backhanded compliment, and I'm sorry, but I didn't come across the folks that I expected to come across when we started going down this road. I came across people that put a lot of thought, a lot of effort, a lot of capital, a lot of expertise, a lot of science into this stuff. And when you're rolling with the guys and gals that are doing it well, it shows. So your comments that have affected me, I don't have to set the cost, but now I'm on record of giving a number, so I just want to qualify that. I can feel confident as the sheriff that this discussion has been had, that the board understands where I'm coming from as far as for what it's worth, as far as not trying to lowball stuff because we are so desperate for revenue in this county. that I have faith in the four of you to make the correct decision, and I do feel that the four of you are going to come together with something reasonable. I'm not married to $5,000. I don't like the $2,500 just because I feel like it's low-balling, but I feel really good after this discussion, and especially with your example. If we can see success here, and it's the will of the board that understands the community and the position we're in, And we can bump it up. And I feel comfortable with that. And I think that everyone else can get behind that as well. I don't think we need to go and set some astronomical number right now and try to chase people out of here. Because then our revenue stream is going to be zero. I don't want it to be. a million when it can be 10 million, but I sure as heck don't want it to be zero because we need this type of stuff here. So I will now retire to my chair and try to not get back up here again. Thank you.

I'll say a number. Stephanie, why don't you say a number? What about three? What about 3,500? What about four?

I think we're in the ballpark.

I think we're in the ballpark.

I don't want to pick a random number, but if you went between 5,000 and 2,500, obviously you're at 3,750. 3,500, that's somewhere around, we need to find consensus.

And I appreciate you guys doing this. I mean, this is hard. I have to think about this long term. I mean, South County, this is a big vote for me. And I may not have the power to change it in the future. That scares me to death. And I don't want to put my residents in jeopardy. But if I could start it at 3500 with the understanding that law enforcement in South County is a priority. that the revenues that come in, we have to think about South County. If we could start it at 3,500 and you guys don't like faint right now, then we have the option of up or down in the future.

Okay. Mr. Chair, it seems reasonable. Again, we're not going to get this perfect. I'm not married to the number, but I think it's a good... I think it would be a good, reasonable starting point. The growers were asking for 2,000 and they were asking for 2,500. So we're going well above that. We also have this middle point, which is obviously logical. If we knew that we were going to have the demand to get to 2,000 acres, within a couple years, I would be 100% on board with 5,000. And I think if we do show that we have demand to get there, that we do need to gradually increase this clearly. We're not going to give away anything. That's got to be the message here. We are not giving away anything. We just have to see how this first year plays out and make the adjustments that are appropriate from there.

You know, I'll just say, you know, in initial discussions, farmers were suggesting, you know, they were okay with 2,000 and then I threw 25. And that was actually, there was pushback on that number. Obviously, there's going to be pushback as we go up higher with any number from the industry itself. But so I would concur that 35, I think, is we're certainly not, I don't think we're giving anything away. And I think there's room both directions there, preferably up only, though. So I'm good with $3,500 for now.

If we're setting up $3,500, but we're not, I mean, I think based on the comment you just made, going up, not down.

Ideally, unless there's some.

I worry about our current growers. You know, I think Supervisor Currow, you started with, I don't want to push you guys away. And I just, I don't know, is 35 the right number or is that too high? That's why this is so hard without having any numbers to really go off of. I don't want to tax them too much, but I also don't want to sell ourselves too short. And I want to make sure we cover all of our costs. And so that's why I just I wish we had something more to base this off of rather than just going with a feeling.

I think we have the voters, 1,000 to 10,000. So I don't think we're necessarily, I get where you're coming from, but it is our role at this point to pick a number based on, all the information we have. And what we have right now is what we have. And if we pick a number and then we direct staff, as you had recommended, to come back with some more analysis with an understanding that we're going to get more information and that there may be adjustments before January, but we need to start the process now or else we're going to be out an entire cycle. So that's kind of the thinking. And I don't get the feeling anybody's running away at 3,500.

Okay, so if we set today for 35 as that rate, we still will continue to work through this. It may go up. It may go down. We still have the ability prior to January to set this. Am I understanding that correctly? I would have gone much higher, but I keep going back to Jake's comments, and that's what scares me a little bit is that Are we starting too high? Would we be better? So I'm all over the place and that's why I really wanted time and I really wanted some of these numbers because there's so much to think about with this. And I think, you know, I really appreciate all of the comments that have been given today and the different, you know, kind of the education that you've given us because all of these things help and help us come up with the best number. And I think we want to be a partner in this. This isn't about just, you know, we're just trying to do this and be awful about it. I think we want to see you successful. We want to be a partner in this, but we also have to take care of the community and there has to be a community benefit in it as well. So I see the sheriff is up again.

Well, I just want to really quickly before you get in there, just to comment on that, just to follow along with this Apple TV subscription analogy situation. There's also, you know, if you cancel subscription, there's a wait a second, we'll give you a month half off. So we can we can always go down if we see that it's driving everyone out. We cannot we know we can always adjust. So we don't. We don't have to worry too much.

Also, a quick tip for the growers. Don't use roundabouts as your example of what we need more of in this community, as much as I agree with you. It might not ring too well with many of our residents who can't stand roundabouts. Or Sheriff Bianco as well. Sheriff Taylor, that was a nice name drop. I appreciate it.

Yeah, it's a sore subject. Permission to speak? Okay, thank you. So I don't think it's any coincidence that it seems like the funnest board meeting we've had in a while is about cannabis. But I did ask, I'm gonna blame Rebecca. So I asked Rebecca to just make sure my math is mathing correctly. So I think at the 3,500 at the cap, we were looking at $3.5 million, which when you factor in my upcoming salary doubling that the CEO promised me, just kidding. I should leave some wiggle room for a South County deputy in that $3.5 million. So I just at least want to throw some number out there, right? If we made it to this thousand cap at that, what revenue streaming would be looking at? And it just helps me wrap my head around, like, with the revenue coming in, I think we can make some type of idea of even what one position would cost. It's not $3.5 million.

Okay. Yeah. Last comment here.

A lot here. And, you know, I want to, I want this county to be successful because again, I, I'm, I'm younger and I'm thinking in like a 20, 30 year time horizon for my next generation. But, you know, just, just to, we're on the precipice of a federally regulated, it's already becoming medical and there's going to be a tremendous amount of federal regulation that happen, I would say, in the next 12 to 18 months that will massively open the aperture for the economics locally in California. At the minute, locally in California, as you've maybe read about the industry, the industry is not in a healthy place. That's mainly to do to banking, access to credit, and just only being a limited amount of areas to sell this. So the industry is in a place in the middle called a consolidation phase. That means that there's been a lot of money raised, a lot of money spent. Now people are consolidating the distressed assets. We're now in year two of the consolidation phase. In the next 12 to 18 months, you will see a wider aperture open in the market because there will either be interstate commerce, you'll be able to sell product medically. So our crop we could get as a medical designation and sell it interstate, which opens up economics. not there yet so i'd say i would as much caution in the early phase while you set this rate especially in the next three to six to twelve months i think it's very wise for you to track what is going on at the federal level because then you can like a two thousand to two thousand five hundred per acre rate could quite easily go to five to ten so the economics will change drastically i was just in missouri and again this is just commodity prices You know, we provide liters to extraction. That's what our farm is for. A liter of distillate, which is essentially consolidated cannabis in the market, you know, as a commodity market, trades for about 500 to 600 liter in California. I was just in Missouri. It trades at 5,000 to 7,000 a liter. Now, at the minute, I cannot access that market with my products, my crop. when i can when i can access missouri and new york and new jersey and these basically production starved regions that can't produce large volumes of crop the economics will get much better but so in the early phases i would again i'm beating the strum because i want to see more operators here more operators here is a benefit to us as well is like the doctor's office start low and titrate upwards If you go $3,500 an acre to give you my economics, that's a $450,000 a year tax bill for me. That is my second highest line item on my budget. That's more than I pay for farm contracting, bed preparation. It's more than I pay Brigantino for irrigation supplies. It's more than I pay for seed. So just keep that in mind. And I know you guys are responsible, and you're coming at this in a really responsible manner, so is the county. But I just want to give you the sort of economic context that we as the growers live through. we're not like we're not making like you know house on hawaii type money here it's like this is uh not it's it's not quite as good as orchids but it's much better than chrysanthemums for me that's the way i sort of see it um so again that's just my that's my final two cents and i'm sorry for speaking so much today okay thank you okay it gives me pause it gives me total pause

I, you know, I, I, I appreciate that. I think, but again, just setting the rate, I don't want to go too low, you know, and setting the right now, getting the analysis and coming back with the, we're leaving ourselves flexibility. So I don't want to, we can come down. We, we, we can, if there's, you know, compelling reasons to do so. And you know, as much as these are nice guys and I've had meetings with them, they are in business and I, and I, If I was in your seat, I would openly acknowledge I am biased, as I appreciate you did. So I think the voters expect us to set a rate that's reasonable, and I don't want to be, based on especially what the sheriff said, I don't want to be too far on the low end, and I don't think anybody's running away at 3500. But I also would like to hear more as we get to a final final decision. But I would like for me, I would just like to start the process and moving forward so that we're not just getting hung up in, you know, too much dialogue without actually make taking steps.

I think there were a couple other items besides this number that we stopped at the fee and cost recovery. We had the administrative references, which I think we're all in agreement need to be updated, right?

Yeah, I think there were any items for, yeah, some cleanup stuff.

The cleanup stuff. So just making sure that there's no other discussions besides the fee rate before Supervisor Sotelo comes back.

I don't believe so. I believe that the rest of it's just administrative kind of... And everybody's good with that?

I'm good with that.

I think we gave consensus on the, if that's okay, county council on some of those...

I just want to make sure that we were documenting that for the...

Piece by piece items.

Yeah. The minute.

Yeah. Well, when Supervisor Stello returns... Can I take a five-minute break?

I could use a restroom break myself. That's fine. Would you take five? Whatever you prefer. Sure, yeah, let's do it, and then let's wrap this up.

Okay.

Okay, thank you. We're back from our break. We're going to continue our discussion here. Okay, so before the break, I think we were going in the direction of $3,500 for now. At least that's where I was going. I'm personally prepared to move forward with that right now as we continue hashing out the numbers going forward. Is there any objection to that? Okay, is there a motion then for...

I'll move to approve at 3,500. Mr.

Chair, is it okay if I second the motion? Second and make an amendment. To bring back some level of an analysis for further consideration at a future meeting and to further clarify.

Go ahead. With the understanding that this number can come down or up, it's not a straight up number.

Yes.

The analysis is needed for us to be able to reduce the rate so that we know that we are not burdening the taxpayers. That's why I'm at the $3,500.

Quick point of clarification. Do you want the analysis to come sooner rather than later or with the policy recommendations? How much time do you need for that? let's just say maybe a month to do the policy corrections and research, then we go to the planning commission, then hopefully they review and approve, maybe one or two meetings, then I can come back here. So you're looking at somewhere between maybe two months is ambitious, maybe three months. So I can bring the analysis first of the cost, or I can bring it with the policy. What would you prefer?

You guys are all looking at me. I'd like it before November 30th.

Yes. So, Mr. Chair, we have to get this approved by January. I want it before November 30th. The growing season is obviously in the spring, it sounds like, if they're doing a growing season then. But the goal needs to be to get this for the new year, to get things approved. And I also will say that, you know, it sounds like it has to go to the Planning Commission. I just want to make sure that... There's mechanisms for things to not necessarily get hung up in the Planning Commission stage because we have a goal of, they have to understand that we have a goal of getting this approved, if that can be expressed to the Planning Commission to get this fully approved by January.

Well, the rate doesn't need to go, right? Just the code update.

Neither does the cost analysis necessarily. I can bring that straight to you, but the revisions to the code do need to go to the Planning Commission.

Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm okay. We're good with that? There's a first and a second. Okay, we have our first and second. We may have roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Zenger?

Yes.

Supervisor Sotelo? Yes. Supervisor Kosmicki?

Yes.

Supervisor Curl?

Yes.

4-0 vote. Motion passes.

Thank you very much. That would conclude... Just confirming that includes... No, it wouldn't conclude. Which...

oh you stepped out i believe you stepped out okay sorry um i do have something else yeah absolutely go ahead um so sorry i missed that um i'm supportive of all of it um i would like to see us and i don't know where it's appropriate and how to do that i would like to propose that we exclude hemp that hemp is no longer allowed to be grown in our county

Okay, that's going to be an issue for the Ag Commissioner, which I can absolutely help him with, but he operates the hemp program right now.

I just think that we haven't seen it be very successful here, and not only that, with some of the cannabis growers that I have spoken to, it is almost in conflict because one grows female plants and the other one grows male, and there's this potential of cross pollination and so if we are serious about cannabis and that is then i think we should do away with the hemp sorry to just throw a wrench in things but i thought i don't know when to bring that up but permission to speak yes yeah all right good morning board of supervisors uh i would second that motion uh i think mainly would be on costs

That would mainly be on cost issues. The hemp program has had a huge reduction in applicants and the last three years it's only been applicants that have proven to not follow the rules and actually been found growing illegal cannabis. So it's just been a huge time suck for not only council administration, but my staff. And we haven't had anybody in that program. And in statewide, it's dwindling as well. It's seen more of the use as a mask to grow illegal cannabis. So I would support that as well.

I wasn't expecting this kind of new for me. So would you be okay when we bring these items back to conclude this and talk about it when we bring it back? Yeah, absolutely.

I just wanted to bring it up because I feel like it's part of the larger discussion. And so I would like to see us moving in that direction. But yes, I'm good with it coming back.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, thank you. Sorry to interject, but I'll bring a little presentation to show the numbers also if you'd like to hear that.

That'd be great. Thank you. Is there any other questions or comments about any of this before we close up here?

Just clarifying that included permission for the chair to sign the resolution with the clarification that it'll be having that clarification added on the number being brought back for further review, but that's included in the motion?

Yes, I will make sure that that, per staff's recommendation, that the signing authorization from the chair is included in that motion, and I would assume that the second would also.

Yeah, thank you. I know now I'm getting out of my software because I'm going to delay us a little because I forgot something I wanted to bring up really quickly. You mentioned when you're giving the presentation, the Planning Commission had authority to basically waive the rules at some points. Is that correct?

That's our existing variance structure. So you can get a variance to any county regulations that exist in our code from the Planning Commission. They're the reviewing authority for those variants. But you have to meet special circumstances. Essentially, like the... the size of your property or the location of your property wouldn't allow you to do it any other way than what might go against the regulations of our code. So they're very special circumstances that are only allowed if, for some reason, a right was taken away from the property owner based on our code due to the size of their property.

Okay. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't too much ambiguity and could be accusations of not being fair or something like that, but that sounds fine.

I'm just curious, when will this item be brought back to us? I don't need a date specific, but just when are you anticipating that this cost analysis comes back to us?

I heard no later than November 30th.

Is that what we're pushing it to, is all the way to November 30th? Or are we going to try to get that done before November 30th? I would like to see it before. I mean, I'd like to see it as soon as possible. I don't want to push you. I know that you have a lot of work, but I would love to get this decided as soon as possible.

So what I will tell you, and I've mentioned this before, planning is collecting all their costs right now. What I think I'll need to get you is just a breakdown of that. And then I'll need to consult with the tax collector, the ag department, potentially the sheriff's office, any other departments that are involved to make sure that they could provide those cost analysis. And then we could show you that all in one. But again, I just want to emphasize planning is collecting all costs right now, especially for the review process. of the permit and for the annual monitoring enforcement could be a question that we will look into but all of those fees are recouped through our fee model for violations and then do we have to state anything today about

know this model of we have our rate that they will the business tax rate that we just set at 3500 and then any inspections anything like that would be billed separately does that need to be specified today does that do you need that clarity or anything like that because i know we talked about that today or are we if we're charging at 3500 that's all now inclusive

we have that clarification from the board and when we review the various titles that this is all across we'll ensure that it's reflected throughout okay all right thank you thank you okay any other questions comments on this item okay well i believe that's it thank you everyone for uh helping us out with this today and we are adjourned thank you